Improving autonomy support: a collaborative learning experience

Abstract

The ACESO project, which was part of the Autonomy support in health national experimentation, brought together 21 partners from Ile-de-France. Among these partners, 14 had practices similar to autonomy support. Partners’ presupposition was that experimenting a cooperative approach would encourage the empowerment of participants, improve their autonomy support and put into place the conditions necessary for the empowerment of people who would be supported. To help participants to meet this goal, the project leader took on a role as third party whose function was to facilitate the cooperative approach by proposing a framework and a method. The study aimed to report the effects of this approach on the participants’ practices as well as to identify the process for achieving this. The participants’ learning enabled them to align themselves with the good practice guidelines collectively constructed within the project. With the project leader’s support, they initiated a transformative learning process that allowed them to develop their reflexivity and empowerment. These transformations had repercussions on their teams and structures, through a halo effect. The halo effect varied, in each partner structure, according to the participation and involvement of the project referent and the other members of the structure, in particular managers. This study has highlighted the value of a cooperative approach to facilitate the learning necessary for sustainable practices transformations and the improvement partners autonomy supports. This resulted in gains in autonomy for the autonomy support practitioners and the people they supported.