Abstract
To address the challenge of achieving social learning in support of transformative change to sustainability, this paper develops an analytical framework that applies a social practice theory (SPT) lens to illuminate the constituent elements and dynamics of social learning in the context of transdisciplinary coproduction for sustainability transitions. Adopting an SPT approach affords a means of interpreting concrete practices at the local scale and exploring the potential for scaling them up. This framework is then applied to a real-world case at the urban neighbourhood scale in order to illustrate how social learning unfolded in a grassroots transdisciplinary coproduction process focused on climate action. We find that a social practice perspective illuminates the material and nonmaterial dimensions of the relationship between social learning and transdisciplinary coproduction. In decoupling these properties from individual human agency, the SPT perspective affords a means of tracing their emergence among social actors, generating a deeper understanding of how social learning arises and effects change, and sustainability can be reinforced.
Highlights
The urgency and immensity of challenges like climate change and social inequality call for new ways of understanding the world and effecting change
Social Learning Outcome (SLO): The learning community will generate a new set of relations characterized by co-mentorship
This paper developed an analytical framework for clarifying the notion of social learning, which reveals its plural forms and teases out its coevolutionary relationship with TD coproduction efforts for sustainability transitions
Summary
The urgency and immensity of challenges like climate change and social inequality call for new ways of understanding the world and effecting change Such “wicked problems” [1] are difficult to solve, as they are complex, contested and ambiguous with respect to their underlying values and causes [2] and display complex interdependencies with prevailing economic, technological and social systems. In confronting these societal challenges, transitions scholars advocate moving beyond incremental improvements, which have proven ineffectual, to find ways of achieving fundamental transitions or transformations in core systems in the direction of sustainability [3]. This makes it difficult to assess whether social learning has occurred and, if so, what kind of learning has taken place, to what extent, between whom and how [13]
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