Can Flexible Learning be Agile?

The book Leadership Agility (Joiner & Josephs, 2007) makes the point that today’s managers/leaders need to be more than flexible and adaptable in rapidly changing environments. They need to be agile.

Agility is about being proactive, making strategic choices, developing collaborative partnerships, making the most of sudden opportunities… with a clear direction and purpose in mind.

After my previous post I wondered if flexible learning helps to develop ‘agile’ learners… And to what extent is the provision for flexible learning itself proactive? Is flexible learning mostly about playing ‘catch-up’?

Much is written about learning, teaching and assessment being responsive to students, being responsive to business/industry, being responsive to changes in technology… being flexible… But are there proactive as well as reactive elements to ‘flexible learning’? Do we need to talk about ‘agile learning’?

I think we already know about proactive forms of flexible learning. We have action research, action inquiry, self-directed inquiry… We have transformative learning, futures learning…


Have we integrated these more proactive elements of learning into our conception and implementation of ‘flexible learning’? What would flexible learning look like and feel like if it was both responsive and proactive?