ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the ‘Pathways’ transformative knowledge network (from which the authors are drawn), one of three funded under the International Social Science Council’s (now the International Council for Science) ‘Transformations to Sustainability’ programme. It discusses the origin of the network and the various stages in the design and implementation of the project by the different hubs in the UK, Argentina, Kenya, China, Mexico and India. It introduces the motivations for the action research (such as learning about transformative research across contexts) including the efforts that were made to foster cross-learning, including single-loop, double-loop and triple-loop learning. The chapter also introduces the theoretical anchors adopted by the project (systems, framings, pathways) and the idea of transformation laboratories (T-Labs), which are discussed again in more detail in Chapter 4.