The theme of learning from experience as a means of improving the effectiveness of rural development projects and programmers has been common in recent years. Considerable effort has been put into refining, monitoring and evaluation systems to enhance organizational learning processes. However, an emphasis on normative approaches to evaluation and learning from experience has led to the neglect of research into the actual processes by which rural development agencies utilize experience. The case study presented here points to the shortcomings of such approaches and illustrates the partisan manner in which individuals and organizations treat the lessons of experience. Actively ‘not learning from experience’ is as much a part of organizational processes as learning from experience. This paper examines the implications of this finding and reviews alternative approaches to improving experiential learning in rural development activities. It is found that such a perspective does not generate the innocuous technical prescriptions characteristic of conventional approaches, but a number of useful directions for further research can be identified.

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