Prisoners of Our Habits - Act Three

Prisoners of Our Habits. Act three. A manager enters.

DEV -"We should try to learn new ways of doing thingies 
      around here. We could participate in action research
      program, you know?"

MNG -"Hmm, That sounds like a lot of money. We could buy 
      a lot of chairs in two-day course for that. Wouldn't 
      that be great?"

...

There is a huge difference between being teached and learning. To start with there is a difference of acquiring existing knowledge versus creating new knowledge. Further there is a huge gap between action learning and a static content course which may have zero contextual relation with developer's current situation. I have seen the affect of these courses, and it does not impress me. It is just like many other mental models in this industry; a pretty model without connection to reality. But hey, traditionally developers have not taken part in action learning.

And old habits are slow to die.