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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. Community-based Sustainability Initiatives as Learning Systems

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Abstract

By means of an extended case study community-based sustainability initiative, Mitchell introduces original empirical research into how the project practitioners shifted from being a first-order learning project to a second-order learning project. Drawing on concepts from enactive cognitive science to augment the practice of developmental evaluation as an approach to support practitioners utilise their experiential learning as an asset under conditions of complexity, Mitchell describes the thematic analysis of the case study initiative in becoming self-aware as a learning project, and the process of using orthogonal interactions during action research meetings to help introduce a disruption to habituated practices of observation. From these sites of rupture, new insights were generated about learning how to learn under uncertain and dynamic conditions.

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Footnotes
1
In Bateson’s (1972, 1979) terminology, this would align with what he termed ‘deutero-learning’.
 
2
Albeit, these are certainly not unproblematic, as discussed at length in Chapter 2.
 
4
Kanani, Big Lottery Fund England Director, in the press release of the fund’s announcement, September 3, 2012. On-line http://​www.​communitieslivin​gsustainably.​org.​uk/​news/​12m-lifeline-for-vulnerable-facing-fuel-and-food-poverty. Accessed 17 December 2013.
 
6
This role is, from the perspective of Developmental Evaluation, played by the embedded evaluator.
 
7
Horton’s rule is say what you mean, and mean what you say. From Dr. Seuss “Horton hatches the egg”. http://​seuss.​wikia.​com/​wiki/​Horton_​Hatches_​the_​Egg. Accessed 16 November 2016.
 
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Metadata
Title
Community-based Sustainability Initiatives as Learning Systems
Author
Andrew Mitchell
Copyright Year
2019
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99371-3_4