The social-ecological learning framework: perception, action, and learning in a changing world

Interactions among and between human and non-human agents across scales are central to social-ecological systems (SES) and their dynamics. Among the emergent processes vital to navigating change, social learning, especially across cultural and onto-epistemological perspectives, has gained traction for building adaptive capacity, fostering collaboration, and enabling transformative governance. Yet, many learning theories in SES research offer limited insight into the fine-grained, embodied, and relational dynamics through which learning unfolds.<br>This paper bridges Pahl-Wostl’s social learning framework with the predictive processing (PP) paradigm from cognitive science to illuminate micro-level mechanisms of perception, action, and learning in SES. As we show, PP offers a biologically grounded, process-based account of how internal models are formed and revised through recursive loops of perception and (inter-)action with complex environments.<br>Acknowledging that theorizing learning in SES requires recognizing the inseparable entanglement of the social and the ecological, we introduce the concept of social-ecological learning. This lens highlights how human–human and human–nature relations co-shape what and how agents learn, emphasizing that social learning in SES is always ecologically situated, and vice versa.<br>Finally, we integrate PP’s distinctions between parametric and structure learning with loop learning theory to offer a novel entry point for examining learning across scales—from incremental updates to deep shifts in assumptions and worldviews, and from individual sense-making to broader societal change.<br>Our framework bridges theoretical silos and contributes to sustainability science by advancing a relational, embodied, and embedded understanding of learning in SES–essential for fostering transformative capacity in an uncertain, rapidly changing world.