Social learning is a process suited to developing understanding and concerted action to tackle complex resource dilemmas, such as freshwater management. Research has begun to recognise that in practice social learning encounters a variety of institutional challenges from the shared habits and routines of stakeholders (organised by rules, norms and strategies) that are embedded in organisational structures and norms of professional behaviour. These institutional habits and routines influence the degree of willingness to engage with stakeholders, and expectations of behaviours in social learning processes. Considering this, there has been a call to understand how institutions influence social learning and emergent outcomes. We addresses this by presenting a heuristic for implementing social learning cognisant of institutional context to answer three questions: (i) How institutional influences impact implementation of social learning design; (ii) how implementation of social learning design modifies institutions influencing social learning; and (iii) how these changes in design and institutions together shape social learning outcomes? To answer these questions a freshwater planning exercise was designed, implemented and evaluated as a social learning process with community groups in two New Zealand catchments. Incorporating participatory reflection enabled the project team to modify social learning design to manage institutional influences hindering progress toward outcomes. Findings emphasise that social learning is underpinned by participants’ changing assumptions about what constitutes the institution of learning itself—from instruction to a dynamic, collective and emergent process. Reflecting on these assumptions also challenged participants’ expectations about their own and others’ behaviours and roles in freshwater planning.

The potential for monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) to enhance innovation and impact in agricultural research and development is receiving increasing attention. New Zealand’s AgResearch Limited and Australia’s CSIRO Agriculture and Food are working with their scientists to support the organisations to achieve greater innovation and impact by embedding MEL into research programs and projects. However, both organisations have found it challenging to systematically demonstrate the value of their MEL initiatives. While there is an increasing number of case studies and anecdotes pointing towards the contribution of MEL to fostering innovation that delivers social, economic and environmental impacts, there is limited evidence, collated through systematic and rigorous methods, to substantiate this. This article presents an evaluation framework drawing on insights from complexity science (the Cynefin framework), evaluation practice and research (complexity-aware M&E and reflective practice) and innovation capacities (learning, reflection and adaptation). The framework is intended for research organisations working in agricultural innovation systems to be able to demonstrate the value of their MEL initiatives as well as carry out comparative analyses. It also supports organisational learning to better inform evaluative strategies and actions.