Facilitating learning in view of sustainability transitions

This paper presents and illustrates an analytical approach for developing knowledge on facilitating learning processes that can enable sustainability transitions. Theoretically, it combines and integrates inspiration from dramaturgical analysis, transactional pragmatism and didactical theory. It conceptualises the facilitation of learning in terms of scripting, staging and performance and focuses on how a setting and the people acting within/upon them simultaneously and reciprocally influence each other. After explaining the methodology, the authors illustrate its application with examples from empirical analyses of workshops where diverse stakeholders aim to create more sustainable agri-food practices. These show how facilitators' actions affect participants' learning. It highlights the importance of anticipating the performance already in the planning, of consistent attentiveness to and steering of ongoing meaning-making in relation to the pursuit of contributing to transitions, of well-considered interventions ('facilitator moves') in the performance, and of building-in check-points to explore the participants' response to the facilitator's actions.