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This reminds me of Sriskandarajah's quote:

“Sustainability is better seen as a measure of the relationship between the community as learners and their environments, rather than an externally designed goal to be achieved” (Sriskandarajah et al, 1991).

Imagine and describe an example where social learning can be used to enhance the understanding of and resolve a problem in your socio-environmental circle?

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Community consensus model collected from the community

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They used FCM (generated via a mental modeler software) to facilitate explicit representations of perceived risks, assets, values, and dynamics of the social, economic, environmental, and political aspects of North Shore to inform impacts of tsunami and proposed mitigation and adaptation solutions.

Through this, the uncertainty they were facing became more manageable, because the mapping process helped conceptualize the relationships between risks and quantify measurements to reduce those.

Henly-Shepard, S., Gray, S. A., & Cox, L. J. (2015). The use of participatory modeling to promote social learning and facilitate community disaster planning. Environmental Science & Policy, 45, 109-122.

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Natural Hazards, ecological risks and uncertainties, lack of awareness, inadequate infrastructure, climate change... many issues are challenging efficient planning when it comes to adaptation and resource management. Henly-Shepard et al., 2015 sought to explore the dynamics and relationship of different factors to inform community disaster planning in relation to the potential impacts of a tsunami.

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According to Reed et al., 2010, Social Learning is:
- Instrumental learning, meaning it is communicative and transformative through acquiring new knowledge and skills.
- Learning that is situated within wider social units or communities of practice, and
- Learning through social interactions.

Reed, M.S., Evely, A.C., Cundill, G., Fazey, I., Glass, J., Laing, A., Newig, J., Parrish, B., Prell, C., Raymond, C., Stringer, L.C., 2010. What is social learning? Ecol. Soc. 15, 4

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Utilizing FCM for decision-making, through the utilization of human resources, adaptation strategies and efficient prioritization can enhance governance (Biggs et al., 2011; van der Wal et al., 2014).

Such frameworks can be used in different community and planning contexts to promote social awareness and action. Noteworthy is that creative and sensitive discussions had to take place for the facilitation of this framework.

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Conceptual planning and social learning framework

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Within their framework, three different levels of social learning occurred, in three phases, through:

-        Iterative modeling and refinements (This allows users to understand, track and alter the rationale behind the model.)

-        Identification of anticipated impacts of a tsunami, and

-        Identification of adaptation strategy efficacy via scenario results.

l. Individual reflection demonstrated single-loop learning,

ll. Group discussion demonstrated double- and triple-loop learning around:
- potential reasons for the varying success of different strategies at achieving the desired results; and
- iterative revision of the disaster action plan based on the new awareness, understanding and knowledge generated

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Pros:

-        Participatory mapping allows for (in this case risk and adaptation) components to be freely chosen and debated by participants

-        This approach accommodates diverse knowledge sets, real-time modification of the model through discussions and consensus-building (Gray et al., 2014),
-         It is time and resource-efficient (van der Wal et al., 2014).

Cons:

-        The need for diverse expertise

-        The inability to weigh individual components or relationships,

-        Requires expert facilitation (including having different stakeholders participate) that is aware of the different power dynamics between groups of people

-        Construction of mental models in small groups is time-consuming

-        Building consensus around complex community socio-ecological systems can be daunting

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This iterative modeling process allowed:

-         the committee to represent the communities’ dynamic nature,

-        run tsunami hazard scenarios to quantify potential direct and indirect effects, and

-        explicitly compare trade-offs of competing adaptation strategies.

The disaster planning committee’s model representations were enhanced through consensus dialogue, mapping, and revisions, indicating that social learning occurred, across individual to institutional levels, and over short to long-term time scales.

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An example of a three-phase framework facilitating stakeholder-driven and scenario-based modeling, to inform disaster planning in the North Shore of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i.