About the Revans Collection for Action Learning
Reginald Revans (1907-2003) was an academic and business consultant who pioneered the idea of ‘action learning’.
Action learning is a problem-solving technique which combines learned knowledge and questions to gain insight. The Revans Collection for Action Learning documents Revans’ career and captures his unique and innovative way of thinking about education and business.
A highlight of the collection is Revans’ hand drawn graphs and tables. When delivering lectures, he often used flip charts to display facts and figures to his audiences in an understandable format. This collection brings together nearly 200 of these digitised brightly coloured, detailed flip charts, from all eras of Revans’ career.
Revans’ distinguishing way of expressing his data makes a rich visual collection that can be useful for students of both business and design alike.
Reginald Revans was born in Portsmouth in 1907.
One of Revans’ characteristically colourful graphs comparing manufacturing in countries around the world.
Amongst his facts and figures, personal drawings can also be found in the collection.
While studying at Cambridge, Revans frequented the seminars of physicists and nuclear scientists. He admired their way of reaching out to each other to ask questions and gain insight to build on what they already knew when their research hit a dead end. From this experience, Revans proposed the equation L = P + Q (Learning = Programmed knowledge + Questioning).
In 1945, Revans took this theory to the UK’s coal mining industry and encouraged pit miners and workers to communicate more effectively with each other. His efforts were a success, and the industry experienced a 30% boost in productivity. After this, Revans became the first Professor of Industrial Administration at the University of Manchester and applied his theory of action learning to other fields, such as education and healthcare.
In the 1950s, Revans moved to Belgium and headed up the Inter-University Project which aimed to boost the productivity of the country’s economy. Much of the material in this collection comes from this time period and features Revans’ work on this project.
As well as thorough business and manufacturing figures, the flip charts in this collection also feature some personal drawings of Revans’. His drawings indicate an interest in optical illusions and how two different things can be seen in one image.
Revans donated these flip charts, along with personal papers and books to the University’s former Revans Centre for Action Learning and Research in 1994. Following the closure of the Centre, the collection was moved to the archives.
How can it be used?
The collection can be used for research into theories of learning and models of business. Revans’ detailed figures give insight to the important work he did and his meticulous approach to learning.
Who might be interested?
Academics and students of business and education will be interested in Revans’ theory of action learning and the data he was able to capture. Those interested in art and graphic design may also be intrigued by the singular way Revans uses hand drawings to convey his ideas and results.
Types of material
Flip charts, drawings, tables.
Related material
- Richard Badnall Papers – another pioneer of industry
- The ABCs of Action Learning
- University of Manchester Revans collection
- A bespoke reading list containing material by Revans and other texts about Action Learning and how it can be applied in various fields.