Social learning for sustainability: Advancing community-based inquiry and collaborative learning for sustainable lifestyles

Abstract

The pursuit of sustainable lifestyles is one that occurs simultaneously at individual, collective and societal levels. Education for sustainable development (ESD), and the offshoot education for sustainable lifestyles (ESL), has generally targeted individual learning and behaviour change. Although, there are several good examples of cooperative and collaborative learning for sustainability in both formal and non-formal educational initiatives. This paper examines the processes of social learning that occur in such collaborative learning cases. Social learning theory has evolved through three distinct phases. The first phase was grounded in the field cognitive psychology, and it provides an explanation of how individuals learn from society or social observation. The second phase developed from the field of organisational studies as an explanation of organisational learning and how collective learning is achieved through an amalgamation of the individual learning of group members. The third phase of social learning is currently evolving as a combination of ecological and educational perspectives, and it aims to explain how sustainability learning can occur collectively and as a society, i.e. for social transformation. In this chapter, a comparative evaluation of five case studies from the Regional Centres of Expertise on ESD in East Asia is conducted to identify what are the social learning processes present across the cases. The main features of community of practice theory are examined as the potential conditions for establishing an effective learning community. The comparative case evaluation demonstrates a high level of benefit in achieving effective social learning in such sustainability initiatives which contributes to smooth implementation of new initiatives as well as strengthening their overall efficacy and longevity.