Approaches to Learning Communities

Most learning communities are initiated by drivers: specific actions, projects, initiatives or focuses in the community that comes to play the role of lever to the development of learning communities, whether this was initially intended or emerged along the way.

At certain points in the development of a learning community, such drivers might reach their limits: the driver cannot push the development of the community forward anymore. Or: the driver can do so, but only if accompanying measures are installed. Accompanying measures are not drivers or alternatives to drivers, but measures to take the learning community process to a higher level.

The accompanying measures are quite different from the drivers. The drivers are by nature slow horizontal social processes, whereas the accompanying measures are more quickly installed and represent vertical actions, such as funding measures, formalizing structures, installing new resource structures in the community or changing policy – all this in support of the progression of the learning community initiative, but by other methods.

At the same time this section offers you an opportunity to link your community activities and debates to the regional and global scenarios and to different ways of understanding learning cities and communities.