Institute of Development Studies

Reflective Practice and Organisational Learning and Change

Reflective practice is about deepening individual and collective self-awareness of how our socially derived knowledge and values shape the quality of our relationships with others and the power relations that underlie these.

IDS has been running participatory workshops and reading weeks with aid agency staff to encourage individual and organisational learning and change, exploring how power shapes aid relations and - unless examined and confronted - blocks the potential for the kind of learning that aid organisations require to respond flexibly and imaginatively to the dynamic political environment in which they are operating.

• IDS key contact: Rosalind Eyben
• Project dates: February 2000 - February 2010
• Project status: Open

Researchers

• Jethro Pettit
• Andrea Cornwall

Selected Outputs

• Chambers, R (2005) Ideas for Development, Earthscan
• Pasteur, K. (2004) Learning for Development: A Literature Review, IDS
• David, R and Mancini, A (2004) Going Against the Flow: Making Organisational Systems Part of the Solution Rather Than Part of the Problem., IDS
• Cornwall, A., Pratt, G. and Scott-Villiers, P. (2004) Participatory Learning Groups in an Aid Bureaucracy, IDS
• Cornwall, A and Pratt, G (2004) Ideas in Practice. Enquiring into Participation in Sida, IDS
• Roper, L, Pettit, J and Eade, D (2003) Development and the Learning Organisation, Oxfam