The Circular (Learning) Economy
I recently attended an event, as part of the team filming it for colleagues, surrounding supply chains (how stuff gets to us). The speakers, Miriam Gilbert and Keith Freegard, spoke wonderfully about the need to do more to include a more circular (recycling) methodology to our manufacturing and processing industries.
And this got me thinking. What are we doing, if anything, about this with our learning? Can we show a similar approach, good or bad, in how we generate, connect, create, collaborate, communicate, curate? (sound familiar?)
But first … what is a circular economy? The Ellen MacArthur Foundation describes it as “a global economic model that decouples economic growth and development from the consumption of finite resources” and that it “provides new opportunities for innovation across fields such as product design, service and business models, food, farming, biological feedstocks and products.” In essence it’s the ability to re-use materials in the manufacturing of new ones. Nothing new, but the processes involved are often ground-breaking and at the forefront of cutting-edge technology.
Cars, for instances, use a blend and mixture of metals, plastics, and polymers in the creation and manufacture of individual parts. It is often costly and time consuming to try and separate these back out again into their component elements when it comes to recycling, which is why it is sometimes never done. But, for the circular economy to work, this does need to be done.
“As a result, the circular economy draws a sharp distinction between the consumption and use of materials: circular economy advocates the need for a ‘functional service’ model in which manufacturers or retailers increasingly retain the ownership of their products and, where possible, act as service providers—selling the use of products, not their one-way consumption.”
Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Yes, I can see that with the growth of personal and social learning, OERs and similar approaches we are doing more to include the students and staff in not only the co-creation of materials, but the lifecycle of learning. But where is the circular element in this? Is it still a linear model of creation and use, is there recycling element we can incorporate (beyond the sharing and reuse by others) that the circular economy encourages? Are the investors (academics, teachers, students, parents, etc.) also taking responsibility for their contribution and ensuring they are acting as service providers and continuing their involvement?
Or, should I be asking, do we need a circular economy of/for learning? For me it sounds sensible, inclusive, engaging, and sustainable, but I am still searching for the right analogy or example to fully appreciate whether it’s feasible or worth it.
If you know better then please do the usual thing and leave a comment below and engage with others who do too. If you’d rather write your own blog post, then do it, please, but also leave the URL of it below too so we can share and collaborate on it.
image source: Jeremy Levine (CC BY 2.0)
This has also reminded me of Ellen MacArthur’s talk at the 2012 Learning Without Frontiers conference. Here’s a section for you:
thought provoking post. Thank you. Isn’t social learning, which you called out, by definition a circular economy? I work in an environment where Social Learning is more than just “co-creation of materials.” In learning environments that are non-hierarchal (referring to a work environment rather than teacher-student relationship in an educational institution) people recycle knowledge and people recycle roles (sometimes the learner, sometimes the teacher.)
Thanks Paul. My understanding of social learning is about the process and engagement of learning itself. Why I believe this is different to a circular learning environment/economy is that all stakeholders have, or should have, involvement and responsibility in all aspects of the learning, including defining and creating the course, the outcomes, and feeding this back for further development. This is most likely to be a social process, but different to social learning? David
My perspective may not be helpful or applicable to a traditional learning environment. I see
social learning as more like an Infinity Loop. An individual may begin with the
process of learning but that learning process eventually becomes a knowledge
sharing [teaching] process; repeatable in the pursuit of more knowledge.
“Involvement”, “responsibility” and “role of stakeholder” are self-determined in
social learning. What is recycled are roles — which are temporary, knowledge
–which is spread, processes– which are reused, and people–which evolve.
I don’t believe a circular economy must be a centralized economy. Anarchy?
Perhaps. But I prefer to describe it as Agile.
An agile learning economy? The term agile is something very different from circular, in this instance, which is why I favour the circular term that indicates that the process of create / consume comes around and continues where the other left off.