Learning approaches and embedding CR&S

Embedding a CR&S ethos is at its core a learning process; it asks people to understand sustainability, develop new capabilities, and make responsible thinking part of how they work. Several evidence-based theories explain how adults learn, and the ones most useful in a CR&S context share a common theme: people learn far more from doing, reflecting, and working with others than from being told information once (Kolb, 1984; Knowles, 1984; Lave and Wenger, 1991).

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle is the foundational model. It describes learning as a cycle of four stages: concrete experience (doing something), reflective observation (thinking about what happened), abstract conceptualisation (drawing out lessons and forming ideas), and active experimentation (trying the new approach). Kolb’s insight is that real learning is the transformation of experience, and that all four stages are needed (Kolb, 1984). Experience without reflection, or theory without application, does not embed. For CR&S this is powerful: people learn sustainability by doing it; running an energy-saving project, then reflecting on what worked, drawing lessons, and applying them, far more effectively than by attending a lecture about it.

The 70:20:10 model builds on the same principle and is widely used in workplace learning. It proposes that roughly 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experience, 20% from interactions with other people such as coaching and peers, and 10% from formal training (Lombardo and Eichinger, 1996). The proportions are indicative rather than exact, but the message is clear: formal training alone embeds very little. To embed a CR&S ethos, most of the learning must happen through real work and through people learning from one another, with formal training playing a supporting role.

Knowles’ principles of andragogy add that adults learn best when learning is relevant to their role, draws on their existing experience, gives them ownership, and solves real problems, which is why abstract sustainability training often makes no impact, while learning tied to people’s actual work succeeds (Knowles, 1984).

One widely held idea deserves careful handling: the notion of fixed “learning styles” that each person is a visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic learner and should be taught in their preferred style (Honey and Mumford, 1982). Despite its popularity, this matching idea is not supported by the evidence; repeated studies and meta-analyses have found that teaching to a supposed style does not improve learning outcomes (Pashler et al., 2008). People do have preferences, and varying how material is presented is sensible, but a practitioner should not design CR&S learning around fixed styles. Approaches that genuinely work for everyone include active, hands-on learning, spaced repetition over time, retrieval practice, and combining words with visuals (Dunlosky et al., 2013; Roediger and Karpicke, 2006; Mayer and Moreno, 2002). This evidence-based distinction matters because organisational time and resource are limited and should go to what practically works.

Beyond these, the wider field of learning theory is rich, and further approaches include social and situated learning (Bandura, 1977; Lave and Wenger, 1991), which emphasise learning through observation and shared participation; transformative learning (Mezirow, 1991), which explains deep shifts in perspective; cognitive and constructivist theories; and Honey and Mumford’s learning preferences (Honey and Mumford, 1982). We focus here on the experiential and workplace-oriented approaches because they are the most directly applicable to embedding CR&S, but practitioners may rely on one of the other theories mentioned above depending on their context. What all the evidence-based approaches share is the recognition that embedding an ethos is gradual, experiential, and social. This points clearly to how a CR&S ethos takes hold: not through a single training day, but through people doing sustainability in their real work, reflecting on it, learning from colleagues and champions, joining communities of practice, and seeing responsible behaviour modelled and reinforced over time (Kolb, 1984; Bandura, 1977; Lave and Wenger, 1991). Learning, in this sense, is the mechanism that turns the culture, behaviour and change explored across this learning cycle into a genuinely embedded, lasting CR&S ethos.