This section serves as a portal through which you can explore different social learning methodologies. It can help you to determine which methodologies are most appropriate for the context of your / your organization's work, whether you are at the beginning of a project cycle or in the middle of one.
Differentiating Social Learning from other approaches
A key issue around the difference between social learning and other participatory or network processes is the intention to make changes - not random changes that take place in any learning network or environment - but a facilitated change process that intends to achieve major change beyond the individual to institutions (and possibly networks). To buy into this concept people need to be assured of the potential for big transformational change otherwise social learning will fall into the category of another participatory process. Therefore it is critical that all those engaged in a project are involved in the scoping and design stage, and that the intention to focus on change at scale and the necessity for constant, looped learning are openly declared and discussed.
Resources
The process of engaging with Social Learning can learn and build from the rich set of resources on participatory development as well as experience and literature on collective action and learning processes.
Background and Theory
See Questions from the Social Learning Checklist below
Positionality: what is the stake/positioning of the "convener" of the social learning process? what are their interests how are those shaping the process?
Risk: Like action research, meaningful social learning activities are disruptive of norms and thus involve a degree of risk. How are we acknowledging and addressing these risks, particularly with regard to the most vulnerable?
Collective mapping and analysis
Social Network Analysis - "the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organisations, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities." (Valdis Krebs, 2002). See more at the KS Toolkit
Codes/Dramas for Farmer Learning, enabling people to communicate to different partners their perceptions of current situations versus desired changes
Human Rights Based Approach, "aim at strengthening the capacity of duty bearers and empower the rights holders"
Innovation Platforms, an opportunity for individuals and people representing organizations with different backgrounds and interests to come together to diagnose problems, identify opportunities and implement solutions
Companion Modelling, a modeling approach in which stakeholders participate fully in the construction of models to improve their relevance and increase their use for the collective assessment of scenarios
Participatory Video, in which a group or community creates their own film, bringing people together to explore issues, voice concerns or simply to be creative and tell stories.
Photo Safari, "by looking at the context from different perspectives, the design exploration becomes richer in terms of creating new and increasing awareness about certain behavior and provides rich content for dialogue about the context"
Wat-A-Game, a useful tool for bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders to play with scenarios
Case studies are a key resource in learning about social learning. They help us to see how different social learning methodologies have evolved organically in some projects and been purposefully designed and tested in others. They also help us to determine which methodologies have produced good results in specific contexts, and which methodologies have been unsuccessful and why.
A repository of case studies has been created on CGSpace. It is available here.
The repository contains 150 case studies from the following documents:
Keywords for methodology, target audience and area of focus
Implementing organization
If you know of other case studies that could be added to the repository please get in touch.
3. Questions from the Social Learning Checklist
These questions/pointers from the Social Learning Checklist can help those already using social learning approaches to assess whether initiatives are addressing social learning as meaningfully and completely as they could/should.
Intent
This is about realising whether social learning is intended, recognised, embraced, characterised or not.
Q. To what degree is facilitated learning and reflection a central component of your plan?
Did you explicitly conceptualise social learning or not?
To what degree did it cover the 'thematic' elements below (social differentiation, looped learning, power, monitoring, evaluating, capacity development)?
Q. Did it change and become (more) obvious and (if not done before) did you then include this in your conceptual approach over time?
Has it been recognised by other initiative members, partners, beneficiaries?
Q. How were institutional obstacles to social learning identified and addressed during the design of the initiative to create an enabling environment?
Looped Learning
This is about double and triple loops for learning to reflect on what activities would be more effective and what behaviours need to change - rather than just correcting errors in an existing practice:
Q. To what extent is the initiative designed around an exploratory process, reflecting on, learning about and incorporating contextual factors that emerge, rather than goal-driven?
What measures are in place to enable the initiative to flexibly deviate from a given goal if the need is felt by the stakeholder group?
Is a process for adaptive action towards a good enough outcome central to the design, rather than bolting on adjustment when a pre-defined solution fails under implementation?
Q. What strategies are in place for encouraging iterative, trust-building processes of engagement?
CCSL Framework and Toolkit
Exploring methodologies
This section serves as a portal through which you can explore different social learning methodologies. It can help you to determine which methodologies are most appropriate for the context of your / your organization's work, whether you are at the beginning of a project cycle or in the middle of one.
Table of Contents
1. Methodological Toolkit
Differentiating Social Learning from other approaches
A key issue around the difference between social learning and other participatory or network processes is the intention to make changes - not random changes that take place in any learning network or environment - but a facilitated change process that intends to achieve major change beyond the individual to institutions (and possibly networks). To buy into this concept people need to be assured of the potential for big transformational change otherwise social learning will fall into the category of another participatory process. Therefore it is critical that all those engaged in a project are involved in the scoping and design stage, and that the intention to focus on change at scale and the necessity for constant, looped learning are openly declared and discussed.Resources
The process of engaging with Social Learning can learn and build from the rich set of resources on participatory development as well as experience and literature on collective action and learning processes.Background and Theory
Collective mapping and analysis
Process design
2. Case Study Repository
Case studies are a key resource in learning about social learning. They help us to see how different social learning methodologies have evolved organically in some projects and been purposefully designed and tested in others. They also help us to determine which methodologies have produced good results in specific contexts, and which methodologies have been unsuccessful and why.
A repository of case studies has been created on CGSpace. It is available here.
The repository contains 150 case studies from the following documents:
The repository is searchable by the following:
If you know of other case studies that could be added to the repository please get in touch.
3. Questions from the Social Learning Checklist
These questions/pointers from the Social Learning Checklist can help those already using social learning approaches to assess whether initiatives are addressing social learning as meaningfully and completely as they could/should.
Intent
This is about realising whether social learning is intended, recognised, embraced, characterised or not.
Q. To what degree is facilitated learning and reflection a central component of your plan?
- Did you explicitly conceptualise social learning or not?
- To what degree did it cover the 'thematic' elements below (social differentiation, looped learning, power, monitoring, evaluating, capacity development)?
Q. Did it change and become (more) obvious and (if not done before) did you then include this in your conceptual approach over time?- Has it been recognised by other initiative members, partners, beneficiaries?
Q. How were institutional obstacles to social learning identified and addressed during the design of the initiative to create an enabling environment?Looped Learning
This is about double and triple loops for learning to reflect on what activities would be more effective and what behaviours need to change - rather than just correcting errors in an existing practice:
Q. To what extent is the initiative designed around an exploratory process, reflecting on, learning about and incorporating contextual factors that emerge, rather than goal-driven?
- What measures are in place to enable the initiative to flexibly deviate from a given goal if the need is felt by the stakeholder group?
- Is a process for adaptive action towards a good enough outcome central to the design, rather than bolting on adjustment when a pre-defined solution fails under implementation?
Q. What strategies are in place for encouraging iterative, trust-building processes of engagement?Previous section: Where are you? Back to Framework & Toolkit home Next section: Iterative design