Action learning for community development from the lens of the UN's SDGs: a systematic literature review

ABSTRACT

In 2015, the United Nations’ (UN's) Sustainable Development Summit adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to transform the world by 2030 through solving urgent social issues, including: poverty, hunger, health and well-being, gender equality, and climate action. We used the UN's SDGs as an analytical framework to review the literature on action learning for community development. The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic literature review to examine the current state of the literature on action learning for community development and to provide implications for research and practice. To that end, we used Garrard's Matrix Method for systematic review and identified 85 articles on the topic published 2004–2023 in Action Learning: Research and Practice. In an analysis of 85 articles from the lens of the UN's 17 SDGs, we identified three themes: research focus of the literature, analysis of the articles from the lens of the UN's SDGs, and comparison of global and Korean contexts in the literature. Based on the study findings, we discuss the significance of the study, implications for research and practice, and study limitations.

KEYWORDS:

• Action learning for community development
• systematic literature review
• The United Nations’ sustainable development goals
• global and Korean contexts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The matrix table of 85 reviewed articles takes up 22 pages. Upon request, we may send it for your review.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Seung-Hee Park

Seung-Hee Park has been with the Korea Action Learning Association and a doctoral student at Seoul Business School, aSSIST University, Seoul, South Korea.

Yonjoo Cho

Dr. Yonjoo Cho is Professor of Human Resource Development at University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, Texas, USA.

Hyeon-Cheol Bong

Dr. Hyeon-Cheol Bong is Professor of Business Administration at Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, South Korea.