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umans have been both fascinatedand tortured by questions

regarding our fate and future for at

least as long as we have possessed theability to share our thoughts. Under

the best of circumstances, these mus-ings involve asking a series of questions

about the present, past, and future.Where are we? How did we get here?Where do we appear to be heading?

Where do we want to go? How do weget there from here?

Our fate and future is and alwayshas been intertwined with nature,

despite the widespread failure of mosthumans to act in a manner that reflectsa deep understanding of this relation-

ship. And now, for the first time, wehave gone full circle, causing the fate

and future of nature to becomeentwined with our own.

The contours of the future we arenow forging, however, are yet to be

fully determined. Simply restated, thefuture is emergent and, within limits,plastic.While conscious design is

unlikely to afford us the capacity tocontrol the future directly, how we craft

our sphere of concern and how effec-tively we link this to action will likelyinfluence the future in profound ways.

In the recent past, many haveassumed that economic growth is a

surrogate for social progress. But some

are beginning to value learning overeconomic growth as the vehicle for

bringing about a more sustainable anddesirable world for all. My goal in this

article is to explore some of the likelyrequirements and potential stumblingblocks associated with employing

learning, and in particular social learn-ing, to achieve a vision of the future I

refer to as ecocultural sustainability.

Ecocultural Sustainability

Ecocultural sustainability refers to botha state of dynamic equilibrium and a

social process that is desirable and eco-logically sound. It requires that a society

can, at a minimum, continually renewitself and its members by supporting: the flourishing of rich cultural andbiological diversity; forms of governance that are just,egalitarian, transparent, and participa-

tory; economies that are sufficient,equitable, accountable, and bioregion-ally sound; and production and consumption thatpromotes universalizable lifestyles and

keeps its wake in check by both learn-ing from and working with nature andlimiting its total life-cycle costs (social,

environmental, and financial).Successful implementation of the

ecocultural sustainability paradigm restsboth on integrating reason and emotion

and on inculcating a balance betweenthe needs of individuals and the impera-tive of the common good (human and

nonhuman). It calls for educationalprocesses and systems that nurture active

citizens and open minds by encouragingwonder, creativity, tolerance, coopera-

tion, and collaboration. By propagatingthe skills to regularly monitor and eval-uate the activities of individuals and

organizationsto learn from their mis-

H

F E A T U R E

MINDING THE GAP: SOCIAL LEARNING FOR

TURNING IDEALS INTO ACTIONS

B Y H A R O L D G L A S S E R

takes and celebrate their successesitpromotes vigorous self-criticism, com-

bats rigidity and apathy, and fostersanticipatory decision-making and adap-

tive learning.And by cultivating theagility to distinguish between needs andwants, meaningful innovation and sheer

novelty, the sacred and the profane, anda balance between specialization and

generalization, such societies prepare

their individuals, organizations, andinstitutions to counteract maladaptiveforces and respond to unforeseen chal-lenges and changes that are beyond thei

control with hope, joy, imagination, andunruffledness.

I am interested in exploringwhether social learning inspires and

fosters planned, directed action andbehavior that is more consistent with

our highest values and aspirationsregarding improving quality of life. Ifso, is this force strong enough to coun-

terbalance the historical tendencytoward anthropocentric and ethnocen-

tric approaches that tend to advantagenarrow self-interest? In short, does

social learning give an edge to antici-patory, holistic, egalitarian, and non-anthropocentric planning processes and

decisions that favor continual quality olife improvements for allhumans and

the biosphere as a whole?

The Gap

Our generation isnt the first to experi-ence a gap between the world of our

aspirations, hopes, and dreams and theworld we create with our policies,

practices, and everyday actions. Of par-ticular significance to our contempo-

rary dilemma is the seduction ofmaterial affluence and the correspon-ding failure to recognize, appreciate, or

effectively respond to the predicamentof our seemingly interminable quest

2

TEAM TIPIn your team, discuss Dave Browers

statement that he was not blindly

against progress, but against

blind progress. How could your

organization be more aware of the

larger impact of different policies and

choices?

Copyright 2009 Pegasus Communications, Inc.(www.pegasuscom.com)All rights reserved. For permission to distribute copies of this article in any form, please contact us atpermissions@pegasuscom.com.

S Y S T E M ST H I N K E RB U I L D I N G S H A R E D U N D E R S T A N D I N G

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manipulate soil, forests, marine envi-

ronments, and ecosystems). I wouldalso modify Rlings insight to incor-

porate the idea that a greening ofprogress tradition, or at least a counter-current, has existed for at least several

millennia. But why hasnt this modifiedview of progress taken hold? The piv-

otal issue, in my mind, is to clarify the

role that learning can play in support-ing the greening of progress and infacilitating a transition to ecoculturalsustainability.

Social Learning and

Ecocultural Sustainability

If a transition to ecocultural sustainability

is ever to take hold, unprecedented indi-vidual and collective change must occur.Change of this character and scale, how-

ever, has no chartered course.While nosociety has yet to successfully make such

a transition, it is not for lack of interestor effort. Comprehensive, coordinated

changespanning our behavior, prac-tices, policies, institutions, and, perhaps,valuesis extremely difficult.

Any planned, directed change byindividuals or collectives is built on

learning. Using the Oxford AmericanDictionarydefinition as a rough guide, I

define learning as the process ofacquiring knowledge, skills, norms, val-ues, or understanding through experi-

ence, imitation, observation, modeling,

practice, or study; by being taught; or asa result of collaboration. I also note thatunderstanding is interpreted very

broadly here to also include intuition,which may be the product of extensive

study, spiritual practice, divine inspira-tion, or even serendipity, rather thanconscious reasoning alone.

Contrary to widely held views, Ido not believe that learning must nec-

essarily engender behavioral change.Not all learning warrants behavioral

change and sometimes competing inter-ests, goals, and objectives militateagainst change. It is only through learn-

ing, however, that we acquire our val-ues, attitudes, and concerns along with

our conception of reality. By acquiringnew information (or exploiting existing

information), we have the possibility totest these values and concerns againstour understanding of reality and, if war-

ranted, we can take measures to rethink

our values, realign our behavior and

action, or do both.When correctiveresponses result from anticipatory learn-

ing (as opposed to simple adaptation), Irefer to them as planned change.

In contrast to others, I view almost

all learning by individuals as some formof social learning.The exception is

pure trial-and-error learning through

direct personal experience, essentiallyimmune from the influence of others.When individuals engage in the processof learning, they more frequently

employ observation, imitation, model-ing, self-instruction, conversation, and

mentoring, among other strategies. Allof these strategies, however, rest on

some interaction with living beings orat least employing the artifacts (e.g. lan-guage, tools, books, drawings, videos,

music recordings, software, etc.) of liv-ing, or once living, beings.

Albert Bandura has argued thatmodeling, from the standpoint of

behavior elicitation, is the most signifi-cant form of learning in which indi-

viduals engage (Social Learning Theory,Prentice Hall, 1977). His social learningtheory explains human behavior in

terms of continuous interaction amongcognitive, behavioral, and environmen-

tal influences. Bandura separated theconditions for successful behavioral

modeling into four components:

(1)Attentiona model behavior inthe environment must grab or capturea potential learners notice.

(2) Retentionthe learner mustremember the observed behavior.

(3) Reproductionthe learner must beable to accurately replicate theobserved behavior.

(4) Motivationthe environment mustoffer a consequence (reinforcement or

punishment) that increases the proba-bility for a learner to demonstrate what

they have learned.

While Banduras social learning

theory was developed to explain indi-vidual behavior, it can be applied to

collectives with great efficacy, too.As long as learning, by individuals

or collectives, involves some form ofinput drawn from others, I characterize

it as social learning.The more salientdistinction, I find, is differentiating

between what I refer to as passivesocialearning and active social learning.

Passive social learning rests on the priolearning of others. It does not require

inputs in the form of communicationor interactiondirect feedbackfrom

other living beings. Passive social learn-ing includes learning that results fromreading a newspaper, watching a black-

smith forge a tool, viewing a movie, listening to a radio program, attending a

lecture or poetry reading, searching theinternet, or following a recipe. It also

includes observing the practices of, andinteractions among, others.

Passive Social Learning. Passive sociallearning has many advantages for cul-

tural evolution over trial-and-errorlearning because it can lead to the same

results at much lower cost in terms oftime, effort, and danger. A drawback is

that most results must be accepteduncriticallyi.e., on trust.Anotherpotential drawback is that it generally

requires tacitly embracing the valuesand assumptions that are encoded in th

transferred knowledge.While the pas-sive social learning process may yieldimportant new insights for the individ-

uals involved, it generally has limitedapplicability for directly spawning sub-

stantively new social innovations.Most learning in our contempo-

rary world is passive social learning.

Because it relies on the received wis-dom of others (frequently experts), pas

sive social learning can be used toreadily propagate behaviors that favor

narrow interests over the commongood. Such maladaptation is ubiquitou

today. An example is the orthodoxnotion of progress, which supports a

general belief that environmental prob-lems do not need to be addressed todaybecause new technologies can always

be created to cost-effectively addressany problems that might subsequently

arise.Vested interests and those unwill-ing to share power generally have a sig

nificant interest in perpetuating suchbehaviors.

Employing Banduras framework,

ecoculturally sustainable behaviors arecommonly seen as less appealing, so

they fail to grab our attention.Thebehaviors are frequently unfamiliar so

they are less likely to be retained.They

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are also often more involved or more

complex, so they are less likely to bereproduced. Finally, the behaviors are

routinely perceived as inconvenient,more expensive, more time consuming,not fun or cool, unsafe (as with

smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles orbicycles), or as activities of the counter-

culture, so there is little motivation to

try them out.The motivation for employingmore ecoculturally sustainable behav-iors is further diminished for two key

reasons. First, a behemoth advertisingindustry bombards us with models of

people enjoying unsustainable behav-iors, without experiencing any negative

side effects or tradeoffs. Second, thenegative side effects that do exist areoften not readily visible or they are dis-

tributed in space and time far awayfrom those causing the impacts.

Maladaptive behaviors are widelymodeled in the media and in society. It

is should be no surprise, as Bandura sug-gests, that such behaviors are likely to beperpetuated despite widespread infor-

mation documenting the negative over-all consequences of maintaining them.

Simply put, our societal emphasis onpassive social learning and our proclivity

for modeling unsustainable, as opposedto sustainable, behaviors severely hamperthe possibility of facilitating a transition

to ecocultural sustainability.

Active Social Learning.Active sociallearning, on the other hand, is built on

conscious interaction and communica-tion between at least two living beings.

It is inherently dialogical.Active sociallearning can be broken into threerough categories that are a function of

the skills and values of the individualsin the collective and the power rela-

tionships that define them:

(1)Hierarchicalbased on predeter-mined, inflexible relationships betweenestablished teachers and learners;

(2)Non-hierarchicalbased on two-waylearning, where each participant, as an

expert in their own right, shares theirknowledge and experience; and

(3)Co-learningbased on non-hierarchical relationships, collaboration,trust, full participation, and shared

exploration.

Hierarchical and non-hierarchical

active social learning are widely appliedand used with great benefit to expand

the penetration of existing knowledge.Co-learning, because of its require-ments for team building, complete

engagement,learning-by-doing, andaccountability, supports the generation

of new knowledge and novel strategies

for addressing real-world problems. Co-learning supports positive change bybuilding capacity in three fundamentalareas: critical evaluation of existing

knowledge and problems, knowledgegeneration and penetration, and appli-

cation of this new knowledge to policy,practice, and everyday life.

Active social learning can takeplace in the context of a conversation,a course employing the Socratic

method, dancing with a partner, sym-phony practice, a community meeting,

an open, participatory public reviewprocess, and video conferencing over

the internet. Opportunities for cross-fertilization and emergence make it

much more effective than passive sociallearning at creating innovations andwidely diffusing novel behaviors. Active

social learning, because of the opportu-nity to directly engage both a broad

range of perspectives and the wholehuman, also has the potential to pro-

mote more open, equitable, and com-petent learning processes. Furthermore,

the potential to receive direct feedbackfrom other living beings and gain a pal-pable taste for the effects of our own

unsustainable behaviors offers a power-ful motivation for challenging the

desirability of the underlying, taken-for-granted assumptions, values, andprinciples that guide our theories-in-

use, routinized policies, practices, andindividual behaviors. As such, the high-

est, most diverse and participatoryforms of active social learning appear

to offer a viable prospect for combatingmaladaptation.

I believe these forms of active

social learning can be used with greatadvantage in our learning environments

and decision-making processes to pro-mote a societal shift toward ecocultural

sustainabilityif they also model thoseprinciples.Active social learning can

support widely different levels ofengagement and inquiry. It supports

multiple-loop learning, which can be

used to question both existing practicesand the values that undergird them.

Because active social learning caninvolve diverse players with competing

or even conflicting values and interests,I posit that the most successful formswill result from non-coercive relation-

ships that rest on building a common

language, transparency, tolerance, mutuatrust, collaboration, shared interests, andconcern for the common good. Such

forms of active social learning canemploy conflict in a positive way bychallenging complacency and encour-

aging out-of-the-box thinking.The more active forms of social

learning can also facilitate anticipatoryresponses by examining routinized prac-

tices, such as the creeping escalation ofstandards for comfort, cleanliness, andconvenience. Examples of activities that

benefit from these forms include playingin an improvisational jazz band and par-

ticipating in collaborative, integrated-systems design projectssuch as a green

building, an organic farm, an ecologicaldesign project applying biomimicry, or agreen planning initiative.A further

benefit of the more active forms ofsocial learning is that their requirement

for elevated levels of engagementespecially when diverse constituencies

are involvedaids in building criticalthinking skills, supports a r icher form of

rationality that integrates reason andemotion, and promotes contextualiza-tion and accountability that are crucial

for helping to close gaps between peo-ples values and actions.

Two significant potential weak-nesses of active social learning come tomind. First, benefits do not accrue

automatically from employing theprocessactive social learning, particu-

larly in its hierarchical forms, can beused with equal ease and effectiveness

to support maladaptation (considerefforts to stimulate ethnic conflict by

Hitler and the Belgians in Rwanda). Ibelieve realizing the potential of activesocial learning rests on the collectives

choosing what level process it willemploy, with full awareness of the

requirements and demands.A second significant weakness of

active social learning is that its successdepends on effective capacity building.

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Success rests at least as much on the

preparedness, competence, openness,and maturity of the individuals engag-

ing in it as on the rules that guide par-ticular organizational learning, publicparticipation, or decision-making

processes. Furthermore, as wise as thedecisions that a group arrives at may be,

they are only as good as the potential

of the new policies and actions to besuccessfully modeled and embraced bythe society at large.Thus, if a societyfails to make the educational infrastruc-

ture investments to prepare all of its cit-izens to fully participate in the highest

forms of active social learning, it willfail to reap its benefits, and ecocultural

unsustainability will likely persist.

A Social Learning Research

Agenda

To paraphrase John Gardner, the great

proponent of individual and societalself-renewal, we have before us some

breathtaking opportunities disguised asinsoluble problems. In an effort toadvance the process of turning these

ostensibly insoluble problems intobreathtaking opportunities, I offer this

tentative list of eight challenges forreview, discussion, and testing in real-

world settings:1. Develop consistent and coherentworking definitions of social learning.

2. Initiate a comprehensive, systematic

review of existing applications and casestudies of social learning.3. Explore the possibility of creating

a consistent and coherent workingdefinition of social learning for

sustainability.4. Identify well-documented, testablesocial learning levers that have signif-

icant potential to help individuals andcollectives respond more effectively to

situations where they have a generalfamiliarity with a problem but, never-

theless, choose not to respond orrespond ineffectively.5. Create well-documented, testable

strategies for applying social learning tominding the gap.

6. Develop and evaluate educationalstrategies to support capacity building

for individual learning, so that peopleare poised to participate in the highestforms of active social learning.

7. Apply social learning to model

strategies for recognizing, understand-

ing, publicizing, and responding tomaladaptionand evaluate their

efficacy.8. Apply social learning to model

ecoculturally sustainable behaviorsand evaluate their efficacy.

As noted earlier, there is as yet no

widely accepted, clear, and coherent

interpretation of social learning.This,however, is no reason to abandon thetermquite the contrary. A modest

degree of vagueness and ambiguity canprovide an entry point for all and stim-ulate a process of clarification, ques-

tioning, and conversation that, in theend, may prove far more important

than any definitional consensus.The paradox of social learning is

that it can result in our ruination or ourrenaissance. Our goal is not simply toevade collapse. Steady improvement in

quality of life for all rests on developingand continually renewing our capacity

to bridge the gap between our valuesand our actions.The secret to making

this ostensibly insoluble problem solublehinges on recognizing that informationis not knowledge and knowledge is not

understanding.The promise and powerof learning for sustainability involves

internalizing this distinction and learn-ing to appreciate that understanding

results from access to information, thecapacity to make sense of it, the oppor-

tunity to openly debate its significance,

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the sophistication to draw meaning

from it, and the wisdom to both put itinto context and act on it.This is how

we build the capacity and convictionindividual and collectiveto bring con-sonance between our highest values and

our actions.While many of the ideas and con-

cepts embraced by advocates of social

learning have tremendous potential tofacilitate a transition to ecocultural sus-tainability, the term currently runs therisk of being perceived as a silver bullet

or panacea.At its best, active sociallearning may very well encourage a

deeper, more robust understanding ofcause and effect, ongoing moral devel-

opment, and creative, anticipatoryproblem solving. I have attempted toadd some modest clarity and coher-

ence to our understanding of themeanings and potential of social learn-

ing and outline some of the challengesbefore usbut many questions remain

unanswered and considerable work andcollaboration remains before us.

Harold Glasser(harold.glasser@wmich.edu)is an

associate professor in the Environmental Studies

Program and Environmental Institute at Western

Michigan University.This article is adapted with

permission from a longer piece that appears in

Social Learning Toward a Sustainable World: Principles,

Perspectives, and Praxis, edited by Arjen E. J.Wals

(Wagingingen University Press, 2007, pp. 35-61):

http://www.wageningenacademic.com/sociallearning

Assuming that interest in improving quality of life and concern for the environment are

strong and sincere, it becomes important to identify or create well-documented, testable

social learning techniques and instruments to help people to:

(1) better understand these values and concerns,

(2) put these values and concerns into perspective relative to their other values and

concerns (particularly those that are otherwise unstated and taken-for-granted),

(3) make the difficult to discern impacts of their actions more conspicuous and glaring,

and

(4) test how they link their values and concerns to their daily actions and practices.

If the outcomes of peoples actions and practices are widely inconsistent with their high-

est values and aspirations and if after engaging in this process they see these values as

fundamental to their world view, then the real work becomes identifying additional, well-

documented and testable social learning strategies to promote more consistent individ-

ual and public policy decision making for minding the gap. Two corollary challenges

include applying these social learning strategies to real-world cases and evaluating their

efficacy.

N E X T S T E P S

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