‘I cannot be passive as I was before’: learning from grassroots innovations in Ukraine

Abstract

The study explores learning processes and outcomes inside grassroots innovations that are emerging in post-Euromaidan times in Ukraine. The study analyses the assumption that this non-traditional education space can be adequate for sustainability transition learning and critical consciousness development. First, the study describes, connects, and operationalizes the concepts of critical consciousness, sustainability transition, and grassroots innovations. Then, it analyses two cases of grassroots innovations (two online sharing platforms), using these operationalized concepts. The results show that learning and critical consciousness development inside grassroots niches are much more connected to previous experience, such as participation in the protest event Euromaidan, than to inner niche learning interactions. While, the online platforms keep alive some of the aspirations that motivated people to become a part of the Euromaidan protest. In this sense, such grassroots innovations keep the values and priorities of the participants "alive" and ensure that the critical consciousness that was acquired does not simply slide backwards. Do shocking events like Euromaidan protest have to happen in order to accelerate learning about values of solidarity and responsibility, as well as to develop critical consciousness needed for sustainability transition? Despite the impossibility to completely answer this question, this study gave some tips, suggesting components of critical conscious development needed for this type of learning¾dialog, reflection, action, leading to increase in efficacy and agency.

Pro-Poor Innovations to Promote Instrumental Freedoms: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Articles on grassroots innovations underscore the importance of new learning models better suited to the need for local groups to engage in building solutions [133,134]. White and Stirling [135] present cases of organized local communities for innovation in the United Kingdom, which, while focusing on food production, present the promotion of education explicitly as a secondary objective.…”

“…White and Stirling [135] present cases of organized local communities for innovation in the United Kingdom, which, while focusing on food production, present the promotion of education explicitly as a secondary objective. As discussed in relation to access to banking services, the use of mobile platforms has also supported access to training, overcoming problems of access to traditional teaching models [134].…”

The Debate If Agents Matter vs. the System Matters in Sustainability Transitions—A Review of the Literature

“…Taking a closer look, we noticed that the terminology considering agency in sustainability transitions was also incoherent. We observed three dominating means of using the terminology in the literature: the term actor (e.g., [36,37]), the term agent e.g., [38,39] and a mix (e.g., [40,41]) of the prior two terms. Based on our findings, most of the reviewed papers (40 out of 77) tended to use the interchangeable terms of agent and actor to describe actors of sustainability transition.…”

Toward an Agentic Approach to Activist Learning: The Interplay Between Agency and Learning in the Narrative of Polish Activist

“…In frameworks which are rooted in sociology, agency seems to be far more interwoven with the issues of social change and the social reproduction of structures, while theorization primarily centers on the social structure–individual relations. This may be the reason why this approach is overly theoretical (Afeltowicz & Sojak, 2013) and descriptive for empirical research; and consequently studies which directly tackle agency are rarer in adult education (e.g., Biesta & Tedder, 2007; Duncan, 2015; Ecclestone, 2007; Evans, 2007; Stetsenko, 2017; Udovyk, 2016).…”