Understanding and governing learning in sustainability transitions: A review

Many transitions scholars underscore the importance of learning in sustainability transitions, but the associated learning processes have hardly been conceptualised. The diverse, well-established research fields related to learning are broadly ignored or loosely applied. In this paper, we systematically explore four interesting learning traditions in terms of their value for gaining an in-depth understanding of learning in sustainability transitions and their relevance for fostering learning, by connecting them to key features of transitions. The selected learning traditions from different disciplinary backgrounds provide valuable insights. None of them sufficiently addresses the complexity of transitions. They include, however, a diversity of relevant learning contexts. We conclude that they have value for investigating new areas such as learning in socio-technological regimes and in later phases of a transition, while enlightening forms of learning that have not yet been fully recognised in transition studies, such as superficial learning, unlearning, and learning to resist change

Teachers as brokers: adding a university-society perspective to higher education teacher competence profiles

Higher education institutions are increasingly engaged with society but contemporary higher education teacher competence profiles do not include university-society oriented responsibilities of teachers. Consequently, comprehensive insights in university-society collaborative performance of higher education teachers are not availab

Inclusion in responsible innovation: revisiting the desirability of opening up

We investigate opening up, a crucial aim of responsible innovation, in the situation of companies initiating sector-wide change in order to take societal responsibility. Two case studies in agriculture were conducted, using a framing perspective that enlightens how issues are (re-)defined and acquire meaning in conversations. For both industry-led innovation initiatives, this showed when and how the initiatives’ issue frames opened up and closed down. The results suggest that the inclusion of a

Communicating tensions among incumbents about system innovation in the Dutch dairy sector

This article investigates the ways in which innovating incumbents address and deal with tensions in their daily conversations in a case of an dairy initiative aiming for sector transformation. Analysis of meetings shows that innovating incumbents employ three strategies to address and deal with tensions such as concerns about the initiative's impact: voicing concerns, questioning as starting point and questioning as response. In these ways, they address tensions at the boundaries between representative and initiative and between representative and constituency. The assigned staff members of initiatives