Based on an ongoing qualitative case study in Costa Rica, this article presents the participatory work that the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) is doing with farmers to protect watersheds from erosion and contamination. Specifically, it includes a description of ICE's Watershed Management Agricultural Programme and how farmers participate in it and a qualitative analysis of the kind of learning that participants are experiencing. ICE uses collaborative and hands-on activities to raise awareness and promote alternative environmentally sustainable farming practices and technologies. These activities result in instrumental and communicative learning as found in transformative learning theory. The instrumental learning that occursincludes acquiring skills and information, determining cause-effect relationships, and taskoriented problem solving. The communicative learning that occurs includes understanding values, concepts, and others' points of view. In conclusion, the learning that occurred resulted in transformations in the conditions of life that promoted sustainability.
This paper reviews studies of transformative learning through public involvement in natural resource and environmental management (NREM). It summarises evidence regarding instrumental, communicative, transformative and sustainability-oriented learning outcomes, and learning processes such as reflection, rational discourse and applying new frames of references in individual and social action. The paper discusses the implications for the design of NREM and public involvement, and presents a new framework connecting non-formal education, involvement in NREM, transformative learning and sustainability. The paper concludes with suggestions for promising future research, such as scaling up transformative learning in the context of NREM, including examining potential complementarities with leading models of social and organisational learning.
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