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Regional sustainability networks in the Netherlands are rooted in regional culture and have an emphasis on social learning and effective collaboration between multiple actors. The national ‘Duurzaam Door’ (Moving Forward Sustainably) Policy Programme regards these networks as generative governance arrangements where new knowledge, actions and relations can co-evolve together with new insights in governance and learning within sustainability transitions. In order to understand the dynamics of the learning in these networks we have monitored emergent properties of social learning between 2014 and 2016. Our focus is particularly on the interrelated role of trust, commitment, reframing and reflexivity. Our aim is to better understand the role and the dynamics of these emergent properties and to see which actors and roles can foster the effectiveness of social learning in regional transitions towards more sustainable ways of living. We used a retrospective analysis with Reflexive Monitoring in Action (RMA), which we combined with the Most Significant Change approach. We found that reflexivity in particular is a critical property at moments that can make or break the process.

Social learning in multi-actor innovation networks is increasingly considered an important precondition for addressing sustainability in regional development contexts. Social learning is seen as a means for enabling stakeholders to take advantage of the diversity in perspectives, interests and values for generating more sustainable practices and policies. Although more and more research is done on the meaning and manifestations of social learning, particularly in the context of natural resource management, little is known about the social dynamics in the process of social learning. In this contribution an integrated hypothetical framework that provides a better understanding of social learning as a generative process with outcomes is presented. This hypothetical framework is grounded theoretically in emergent social learning theory and empirically in a retrospective case study around multi-stakeholder sustainability-oriented regional learning in the North of The Netherlands. Our findings indicate that trust, commitment and reframing are interrelated aspects and emergent properties of interaction in the process of social learning. Hence, the framework presented reflects social learning as a dynamic process, in which trust, commitment and reframing are continuously produced and reproduced through the (inter)actions of the individual actors.

The educational experimental project ‘Bridge to the Future’, which took place between 2002 and 2007, aimed primarily at supporting the regional development process by action- oriented student research. The second aim was to develop students’ roles as boundary workers in the co-creation of knowledge in a regional setting. Our basic assumption, like Gaventa and Cornwall (2001), is that collaborative research is empowering and innovative because it links science and society in such a way that it involves peoples’ own critical reflection and learning. Actors’ roles need to be redefined during this process. This causes uncertainty which needs coaching and facilitation. The ‘Bridge to the Future’ project started with a kick-off meeting in the area with regional stakeholders, students, supervisors and a project leader. The integrated research question developed there represented the complexity of the regional issues and provided an interdisciplinary starting point for the students who had to conduct their thesis-research in the framework of the collaborative project. As such the research question became a boundary object, which created possibilities for communication, interaction, learning and reflection. During monthly meetings different viewpoints were exchanged and discussed in a multi-stakeholder setting, which slowly developed into a learning community, providing a base and network for regional actors to develop plans collaboratively. As boundary workers the students and their research empowered the people from the area and provided a stronger sense of identity. Important impact of the project in the area is a LEADER network, rural art and rural tourism projects, international exchange visits and the actual development of biomass installations. We conclude that collaborative landscape research can be valuable if actors learn to take on new roles, are supported in creating boundary objects, organise reflection and are able to develop new knowledge, for sustainable development and the management of landscapes.