Conference Agenda

In research on sustainability transitions (ST), learning is often considered vital for transforming our world into a more sustainable direction (van Mierlo et al. 2020). Recent reviews of literature (Goyal & Howlett 2020, Van Poeck et al. 2020, van Mierlo & Beers 2020) shed light on why learning is regarded key to foster transitions, what people are assumed to learn in STs, and what are gaps in the currently available scientific knowledge on the topic. ST researchers have been arguing for learning as a prerequisite for the creative development and maturation of novel practices that provide alternatives for currently non-sustainable regimes, for questioning what is taken for granted, for developing shared visions and plans, for creating new knowledge, for disseminating ideas and experiments, for collective problem-solving, etc. (Goyal & Howlett 2020, Van Poeck et al. 2020). As to what is or ought to be learned, reference is made to practical learning outcomes (e.g. more sustainable technologies and practices, innovative solutions for sustainability challenges), conceptual learning outcomes (e.g. new knowledge, commitment, visions, framings), and relational learning outcomes (e.g. new networks, trust) (Van Poeck et al. 2020). The literature reviews of van Mierlo and Beers (2020) and Van Poeck et al. (2020) also reveal important theoretical and empirical research gaps that can be summarised as a poor conceptual and empirical underpinning. This symposium addresses these gaps in the state of the art and aims to contribute to overcoming some of the identified shortcomings.
Van Mierlo and Beers (2020, p. 255) argue that ‘learning processes have hardly been conceptualised, discussed and elaborated within the field’ and sharply criticise the fact that well-established research fields related to learning that could provide valuable insights are ‘broadly ignored or loosely applied’ (Ibid.). Although several authors explicitly refer to learning theories, not all studies apply learning theories and several do it only superficially which results in conceptual haziness and confusion of the process and outcomes of learning (Boon and Bakker 2016, Benson et al. 2016, Beers et al. 2016, Singer-Brodowski et al. 2018, Sol et al. 2018, Van Poeck et al. 2020, Van Poeck & Östman 2021). These observations, van Mierlo et al. (2020, p. 253) argue, highlight the need for conceptual work that goes ‘beyond a superficial use of notions such as social learning and double-loop learning’. Furthermore, the empirical knowledge base for progressing our understanding of learning in STs is weak. Learning is often assumed to take place, but is neither specified nor critically investigated (van Mierlo et al. 2020). Van Poeck et al. (2020) illustrate that many empirical research contributions do not convincingly reveal that, what and how people are learning in practices striving for STs and that, too often, strong claims are made without sufficient empirical evidence.
In this symposium, we present and discuss four papers that – theoretically, methodologically, and empirically – contribute to opening-up the black-box of what and how people learn while trying to tackle sustainability problems. The first paper does so by integrating three conceptual frameworks that deal to a different extent with reflexivity, collective processes, and the role of materials for learning and practices. The second paper presents and illustrates an analytical approach for creating practically useful knowledge on how to facilitate learning in view of STs. The third paper presents empirical investigations on the role of emotions within learning processes in STs.

Facing unprecedented socio-ecological challenges sustainability transition studies call for new modes of problem-solving encouraging processes of social learning (van Mierlo & Beers 2020). A central aspiration is that processes of social learning should transform socio-ecologically harmful everyday practices and engender novel sustainable habits and lifestyles. However, sustainability transition literature was found to insufficiently conceptualize how learning takes places in everyday life and affects practices (Boström et al. 2018). To enhance the understanding of this relationship, this contribution introduces three complementary concepts that elucidate distinctive aspects of learning processes and the formation of practices. In the next step the three concepts are integrated into an analytical framework to better conceptualise and investigate how learning takes place in everyday life. All three concepts deal to a different extent with reflexivity, collective processes and the role of materials for learning and practices. The community of practice approach lays emphasis on how meaning is negotiated in communities that characterise through collective activities, roots and objectives (Wenger 1998). Further, the relation between the identities of the individual members of those communities and learning processes is elucidated. Practice theory captures how actors form practices by aligning specific meanings, competencies and materials (Pantzar & Shove 2010). If practices are performed repeatedly those linkages are reinforced and begin to stabilise the practice. Further, practices of different domains (e.g. working, shopping, mobility) mutually depend on each other and build practice complexes, which further stabilize everyday doings. The third concept, transactional theory, is based on work of pragmatist thinker Dewey. It possesses explanatory power with regard to how change comes about in everyday life. Different kinds of situations are conceptualised, in which actors hesitate to continue with their habits and potentially start a reflexive inquiry (Östman 2010, Van Poeck et al. 2020). We argue to take the transactional perspective as a starting point for understanding how reflexive processes take place in everyday life and integrate insights from the communities of practice approach and practice theory. The former can provide a potential collective learning path for specific communities and shed light on the dynamics of identity formation and learning. The latter enhances our understanding of how learning can irritate the reproduction of practices by considering socio-material entanglements and complexes of practices.

Boström, Andersson, Berg, Gustafsson, Gustavsson, Hysing, Lidskog, Löfmarck, Ojala, Olsson, Singleton, Svenberg, Uggla, Öhman, 2018. Conditions for Transformative Learning for Sustainable Development: A Theoretical Review and Approach. Sustainability 10, 4479. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124479 Östman, 2010. Education for sustainable development and normativity: a transactional analysis of moral meaning‐making and companion meanings in classroom communication. Environmental Education Research 16, 75–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620903504057 Pantzar, Shove, 2010. Understanding innovation in practice: a discussion of the production and re-production of Nordic Walking. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 22, 447–461. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537321003714402 van Mierlo, Beers, 2020. Understanding and governing learning in sustainability transitions: A review. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 34, 255–269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2018.08.002 Van Poeck, Östman, Block, 2020. Opening up the black box of learning-by-doing in sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 298–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2018.12.006 Wenger, 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives. Cambridge University Press.

While sustainability transitions (ST) research widely acknowledges the importance of learning for realising transitions, it often remains black-boxed what exactly people are learning in practices striving for a more sustainable world as well as how learning takes shape and is facilitated (van Mierlo et al. 2020). Convincing empirical evidence of what it is that influences learning is very rare (Van Poeck et al. 2020). Yet, precisely that type of knowledge is needed to identify impactful interventions and, thus, to provide guidance for improving learning processes in the context of STs (Van Poeck & Östman 2021). To address this gap, this paper focuses on facilitating (non-formal) learning in the pursuit of STs. We present and illustrate an analytical approach that is designed to develop useful knowledge on how learning processes in the context of STs can be facilitated. Theoretically, it combines and integrates dramaturgical analysis (Feldman 1995, Hajer 2005), transactional pragmatist theory (Dewey & Bentley 1949, Ryan 2011), and didactical theory on teaching and learning (Östman et al 2019a,b). The framework conceptualises the facilitation of learning in terms of scripting, staging, and performance (Van Poeck & Östman 2022). Scripting involves formulating purposes and clarifying the roles of facilitators and participants. Staging involves the organisation of a learning environment which brings certain objects/phenomena into attention and offers certain tasks for the participants. The performance can be grasped in terms of a variety of facilitator moves: actions and interventions that help to guide the participants’ learning. We explain the methodology and illustrate its application with empirical examples from case studies of diverse settings aimed at creating more sustainable agri-food, mobility, and energy practices. The analysis shows how facilitators’ choices and actions affect the participants’ learning and highlights the importance of consciously governing ongoing meaning-making in the pursuit of contributing to transitions, of anticipating the performance already in the planning, of well-considered interventions (‘facilitator moves’) in the performance, and of building-in check-points to explore the participants’ response to the facilitator’s actions. While fully recognising that facilitating learning in view of STs is not a matter of effectively changing participants’ thinking and acting towards predetermined outcomes, our research shows that, nevertheless, it does require careful and well-considered planning and steering in the pursuit of helping the participants to jointly develop promising pathways towards a more sustainable world. The results of our empirical analyses reveal diverse ways in which facilitators’ work can help accomplishing this.

Dewey, Bentley, 1949/1991. Knowing and the known. Southern Illinois University Press. Feldman, 1995. Strategies for Interpreting Qualitative Data. SAGE Publications Inc. Hajer, 2005. Setting the stage. A dramaturgy of policy deliberation. Administration & Society, 36(6), 624-647. Östman, Van Poeck, Öhman, 2019a. A transactional theory on sustainability learning. In: Sustainable Development Teaching: Ethical and Political Challenges. Routledge, 127-139. Östman, Van Poeck, Öhman, 2019b. A transactional theory on sustainability teaching: Teacher moves. In: Sustainable Development Teaching: Ethical and Political Challenges. Routledge, 140-152. Ryan, 2011. Seeing Together. Mind, Matter, and the Experimental Outlook of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley. American Institute for Economic Research. van Mierlo, Beers, Halbe, Scholz, Vinke-de Kruijf, 2020. Learning about learning in sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 34, 251-254. Van Poeck, Östman, Block, 2020. Opening up the black box of learning-by-doing in sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 34, 298-310. Van Poeck, Östman, 2021. Learning to find a way out of non-sustainable systems. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 39, 155-172. Van Poeck, Östman, 2022. The Dramaturgy of Facilitating Learning Processes: A Transactional Theory and Analytical Approach. In: Deweyan Transactionalism in Education. Beyond Self-action and Inter-action. Bloomsbury Publishing, 123-135.

Emotions play an important role in sustainability transitions (Martiskainen & Sovacool 2021) as well as in learning processes connected to sustainability issues (e.g. Gan & Gal 2022, Manni et al. 2017). Yet, there is a lack of empirical studies outlining exactly how emotions contribute to or can impede change processes and how they are implicated in learning toward such change. It is thus our ambition to pinpoint how emotions can be generative or restrictive for such learning in terms of enabling change to occur. The theoretical contribution of this paper is to identify which functions emotions fulfil in the learning process. We conceptualise the generative function of emotions with the help of pragmatist literature on education and learning, and specifically Dewey’s (1938, 1957) pragmatist theory. Emotions can, for example, act as disturbances which might start a learning process and motivate people to reflect on their current habits and find ways of resolving problems (Östman et al. 2019). We also stress how a desire for a different future can help drive the learning process forward (Garrison 1997) toward the emergence of alternative ways of being (Garrison et al. 2015). In this case, emotions play a crucial role in people enacting change. Emotions can, however, also have a restrictive function. Feminist literature (e.g. Ahmed 2014, Boler 1999) offers, for example, insights into how certain emotional customs or rules structure how people are able to feel and which emotions they are able to express in learning situations. Emotions and emotional rules can create barriers to finding creative solutions, limit which concerns can be taken up in the learning process, and orient people toward certain changes but not others. For the empirical contribution of this paper, we study several cases of energy transitions-in-the-making in Germany, namely transitions away from lignite coal mining and the development of energy communities. We draw on observations of collective learning situations and interviews on participants’ perceptions of, and emotions connected to, these learning situations. We use a transactional methodology for analysing learning (Östman & Öhman 2022) to create insights into which emotions are taken up in the learning process and how they influence the learning. With the help of pragmatist didactical theory and (pragmatist) feminist literature on emotions, we then establish in which ways emotions might have been generative or restrictive in the learning situations contributing to sustainability transitions.

Ahmed, 2014. The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh University Press. Boler, 1999. Feeling power: Emotions and education. Routledge. Dewey, 1938. Experience and education. Free Press. Dewey, 1957. Human nature and conduct: An introduction to social psychology. Random House Modern Library. Gan, Gal, 2022. Student emotional response to the lesser kestrel environmental and sustainability education program. Environmental Education Research, 1–22. Garrison, 1997. Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and desire in the art of teaching. Teachers College Press. Garrison, Östman, Håkansson, 2015. The creative use of companion values in environmental education and education for sustainable development: Exploring the educative moment. Environmental Education Research, 21(2). Manni, Sporre, Ottander, 2017. Emotions and values – a case study of meaning-making in ESE. Environmental Education Research, 23(4), 451–464. Martiskainen, Sovacool, 2021. Mixed feelings: A review and research agenda for emotions in sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 40, 609–624. Östman, Öhman, 2022. A transactional methodology for analysing learning. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1–17. Östman, Van Poeck, Öhman, 2019. A transactional theory on sustainability learning. In Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (Eds.), Sustainable Development Teaching: Ethical and Political Challenges (pp. 127–139). Routledge.