By Marina Knickel and Guido Caniglia
2. Guido Caniglia (biography)
What is required for social learning in living labs? How can social learning be mapped in living labs?
Living labs are conceived as spaces for social learning across difference in real-world situations through transdisciplinary research with diverse actors. We argue that the following conditions, often intertwined and building on each other, are required to set up living labs as learning spaces:
1. Epistemic: Learning to foster knowledge pluralism
2. Social: Learning to cultivate safer spaces
3. Symbolic: Learning to address power dynamics and promote ‘unlearning’
- setting up a safe space and overtly practising co-leadership to tackle tensions in a constructive way and tame power effects
- engaging in deliberate processes of “social unlearning” can also be helpful. Alonso-Yanez et al. (2019) describe social unlearning as “a shared, intentional departure from previous routines and systems of meaning associated with … individual professional practices.”
4. Temporal: Learning to balance immediate project outputs with long-term real-world outcomes
Mapping conditions for social learning in living lab spaces
We have also developed a way of mapping social learning based on these four conditions. We combine them with the idea of a learning zone (between comfort and discomfort) as described in an earlier i2Insights contribution Using discomfort to prompt learning in collaborative teams. Following Freeth and Caniglia (2020), we call this a ‘collaborative epistemic living space’.
In the figures below we provide three examples of how such mapping can be used; these are taken from three living labs we studied in the European Union-funded project ROBUST, focussed on making rural and urban relations mutually beneficial.
We called the first case ‘Drift’ because the team opted to pursue research and practice goals individually due to limited agreement on common goals; the process was turbulent with increasing tension in their relations. As shown in the figure, this team largely occupied the discomfort zone, which hindered learning from one another and impacted the results of joint work. For example, we detected that there was no open dialogue about how to deal with differing expectations and often competing priorities of the research and practice partners (symbolic dimension).
In the second case, ‘Dancer,’ the team remained flexible and agile in their collaboration, sensitive to individual needs and pragmatic about ways forward. This team actively embraced social learning. Both research and practice partners could leave the comfort zones of their respective disciplinary and professional routines for the learning zone, which allowed them to systematically explore different views on the issues to be addressed (epistemic dimension). They also scoped out objectives that were both sufficiently high priority politically and meaningful for scientific investigation. Further, they identified competences required and suitable methods for different stages of the joint work. Their ethos of constructive cooperation (social dimension) alleviated the effects of power asymmetries (eg., governing research in a top-down way) (symbolic dimension).
The third case, ‘Untapped,’ largely stayed in the discomfort zone, which did not allow this team to achieve as much as they could have. One of the central difficulties was the practice partners’ inability to articulate their expectations of the project; at the same time, the researchers were frustrated that “research is abandoned” and felt they were losing their identity (epistemic and social dimensions). However, the researchers did not voice their frustrations to avoid possible tensions. The research team also struggled to find a balance between the project deliverables and the work in the case study region, especially considering that the issues addressed were not urgent (temporal).
Concluding remarks
We have provided a way of conceptualising and mapping social learning. Would these be useful in your research? Have you identified other conditions that are important in fostering social learning in living labs? Does the idea of a learning zone resonate with your experience?
To find out more:
Knickel, M., Caniglia, G., Knickel, K., Šūmane, S., Maye, D., Arcuri, S., Keech, D., Tisenkopfs, T. and Brunori, G. (2023). Lost in a haze or playing to partners’ strengths? Learning to collaborate in three transdisciplinary European Living Labs. Futures, 152. (Online – open access) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103219
References:
Alonso-Yanez, G., House-Peters, L., Garcia-Cartagena, M., Bonelli, S., Lorenzo-Arana, I. and Ohira, M. (2019). Mobilizing transdisciplinary collaborations: Collective reflections on decentering academia in knowledge production. Global Sustainability, 2. (Online – open access) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2019.2. See also the i2Insights contribution by Alonso-Yanez, G., House-Peters, L., Garcia-Cartagena, M. (2020) Decentering academia through critical unlearning in transdisciplinary knowledge production / Descentralizando la academia a través del des- aprendizaje crítico en la producción de conocimiento transdiciplinario.
Freeth, R. and Caniglia, G. (2020). Learning to collaborate while collaborating: Advancing interdisciplinary sustainability research. Sustainability Science, 15, 1: 247–261. (Online) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-019-00701-z
Biography: Marina Knickel PhD is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria. She is a social scientist working on transdisciplinary approaches in agri-food and land use research. Her current work lies at the intersection of transdisciplinary sustainability research, social sciences & humanities, and innovation studies. She is particularly interested in strengthening science-society collaborations by focusing on mutual learning for actors’ capacity-building, knowledge co-production processes and epistemic justice.
Biography: Guido Caniglia PhD is a philosopher and historian of science working in sustainability science. His research interests revolve around the intersecting epistemological, ethical, and political dimensions of knowledge co-production in this field, including in the development of new educational formats. He is the Scientific Director of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Klosterneuburg, Austria.