While sustainability transitions (ST) research widely acknowledges the importance of learning for realising transitions, it often remains black-boxed what exactly people are learning in practices striving for a more sustainable world as well as how learning takes shape and is facilitated (van Mierlo et al. 2020). Convincing empirical evidence of what it is that influences learning is very rare (Van Poeck et al. 2020). Yet, precisely that type of knowledge is needed to identify impactful interventions and, thus, to provide guidance for improving learning processes in the context of STs (Van Poeck & Östman 2021). To address this gap, this paper focuses on facilitating (non-formal) learning in the pursuit of STs. We present and illustrate an analytical approach that is designed to develop useful knowledge on how learning processes in the context of STs can be facilitated. Theoretically, it combines and integrates dramaturgical analysis (Feldman 1995, Hajer 2005), transactional pragmatist theory (Dewey & Bentley 1949, Ryan 2011), and didactical theory on teaching and learning (Östman et al 2019a,b). The framework conceptualises the facilitation of learning in terms of scripting, staging, and performance (Van Poeck & Östman 2022). Scripting involves formulating purposes and clarifying the roles of facilitators and participants. Staging involves the organisation of a learning environment which brings certain objects/phenomena into attention and offers certain tasks for the participants. The performance can be grasped in terms of a variety of facilitator moves: actions and interventions that help to guide the participants’ learning. We explain the methodology and illustrate its application with empirical examples from case studies of diverse settings aimed at creating more sustainable agri-food, mobility, and energy practices. The analysis shows how facilitators’ choices and actions affect the participants’ learning and highlights the importance of consciously governing ongoing meaning-making in the pursuit of contributing to transitions, of anticipating the performance already in the planning, of well-considered interventions (‘facilitator moves’) in the performance, and of building-in check-points to explore the participants’ response to the facilitator’s actions. While fully recognising that facilitating learning in view of STs is not a matter of effectively changing participants’ thinking and acting towards predetermined outcomes, our research shows that, nevertheless, it does require careful and well-considered planning and steering in the pursuit of helping the participants to jointly develop promising pathways towards a more sustainable world. The results of our empirical analyses reveal diverse ways in which facilitators’ work can help accomplishing this.

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