Social learning from public engagement: dreaming the impossible?

Learning that transcends participation processes is critical if public engagement is to into a legacy of enhanced environmental citizenship. However, a lack of evidence has limited discussion to date to largely ‘aspirational’ claims. This offers the first rigorous examination of whether public participation does generate -process social learning. Initially we review the literature on public participation environmental citizenship to identify the key dimensions of social learning. We then -visit a well-worked case study of an innovative public engagement process on the waste strategy from the 1990s. Approximately one third of the original have been interviewed to identify whether and how the experience had a effect on them. Key methodological difficulties are discussed, not least the difficulties of attributing learning to a process that happened ten years . However, we argue that there is evidence that both instrumental and learning have taken place, and conclude by identifying key areas that further research.