The Regeneration Lab

In deze aflevering van The Regenerative Education Podcast ga ik het gesprek aan met dr. Frans-Willem Korsten, hoogleraar aan de Erasmus Universiteit en Leidse Universiteit. Zijn doel in het onderwijs is het verbreden van sensibiliseren, het verbreden van de capaciteit van lerende om te voelen. Een belangrijk onderdeel van zijn aanpak is spelen, processen ingaan waar je niet de uitkomst van weet met alle mooie risico’s die daarbij horen. Hij baseert zijn onderwijs op: wat is aan de hand in de wereld in relatie tot deze generatie? Dit is een proces-aanpak, dat schuift en veranderd door de tijd heen. Hij benadrukt hierbij ook het verschil tussen weten en realiseren, en het belang van onderwijs wat mensen in stelt staat om realisatie te realiseren. Hij ziet een link tussen testen, meten, controleren en de drang van hoger onderwijs door de hyperfocus op het weten.  In het gesprek zijn de volgende Systeem barrières en kansen naar voren gekomen:  Het belang van een totaalproces aan de hand van geleefde ervaring, gebaseerd op radicale gelijkheid.   Hij is continue opzoek naar het voelen van wat er aan de hand is en daarin een positie innemen om te faciliteren dat mensen in relatie tot die ervaring kunnen leren samen.  Een belangrijk uitgangspunt van zijn aanpak is het opzoeken naar de speelruimtes binnen de grenzen van wat er vastgelegd staat in de systemen en regels.  Hij pakt hierbij vaak expliciet pijnpunten waarvan hij voelt of verwacht dat het intern tot frictie kan leiden.  Hij ziet veel potentie in spelen als een pedagogisch-didactisch vorm van leren maar twijfelt hoeveel ruimte het huidige systeem biedt om echt te spelen.  Door de 18 jaar dat zij al geconditioneerd zijn voor ze in de universiteit komen wordt de bereidheid om te spelen er zonder pardon uitgewerkt, dit verreist een lang proces van genezen.  Hij ziet een grote uitdaging in de conditionering van de huidige samenleving, en studenten, om te moeten voldoen binnen een hoog competitieve cultuur.  Een van de belangrijkste uitdagingen in het huidige systeem is het tekort aan financiële en bezettingsruimte voor professionalisering en bijscholing van docenten.  Hij pleit voor een bottoms-up beweging om in samenspraak met docenten elkaar te helpen hun eigen praktijken te ontwikkelen.   Externe Links:  https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/frans-willem-korsten#tab-1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/frans-willem-korsten-a5b8a513/?originalSubdomain=nl https://www.pzwart.nl/prof-dr-frans-willem-korsten/ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frans-Willem-Korsten 

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with dr. Peter Merry, chief innovation officer of Ubiquity University and a thought leader in the field of transformational leadership. He argues for the creation of portfolio’s of learning that show proof of competences based on interactions with life, leveraging the multiplicity of learning that happens throughout someone’s life on their way to formal accreditated degree. In this approach there is a balance between a social impact project, self-mastery and skills and knowledge development through courses and electives offered by Ubiquity or any other place of learning .  In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  Allowing learners to provide evidence of learning from their life as well as other educational institutions to construct a portfolio of competence at The inclusion of the subjective into the realm of academia, for example by including art works in the dissertation and the inclusion of the inner experience of working on the dissertation.  The inclusion of bringing in knowing and learning that include but go beyond cognitive learning can help us navigate some of the challenges that we are facing by seeing the interconnectedness of the problems and systems we are engaged with.  Peter argues that we have already transgressed some of the natural tipping points and we thus need to move beyong sustaining towards regenerating natural systemic health.  Argues that it is in enacting change in the world you realize why you have learn and work on self-mastery.  The self-mastery side is most difficult component of teaching this approach through a digital approach, to assess this weekly journal entries as well as quarterly reflective reports based on mindfulness practices in relationship to their social impact and cognitive study are asked for.  This process is supported through a self-mastery mentor as well as social impact coach who supports them in their personal development journey and incubation periods for their projects respectively.  Accreditation bodies can be the main blocking bodies to innovation in HE, re-examining their role and practice to contribute to educational innovation is paramount.  External Links UBIQUITY UNIVERSITY IS A GLOBAL UNIVERSITY DESIGNED FOR SOCIAL IMPACT Peter Merry - UbiVerse About – Peter Merry Peter Merry – This site exists to help you discover the world of Peter Merry Peter Merry | LinkedIn Peter Merry | Transition World Global Accreditation Council 

Debbie Keijner, co-founder of Soul.com and a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, explores innovative approaches to educational leadership. She discusses the hybrid model of consultancy and education, emphasizing the impact of soul-driven leadership. Debbie advocates for removing competition in learning, promoting collaboration instead. She shares insights on process design and the importance of listening in fostering meaningful conversations. Enthusiasm in learning leads to actionable change, envisioning a future where students teach each other in a peer-led environment.

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with Mariëtte Huizinga, (co-)founder of one.why and guest lecturer at Avans University of Applied Sciences. She is passionate about making a change, about facilitating learning experiences that allow for impact in local regions. She does this primarily in Latin America together with regions to show them the power of entrepreneurial spirits in learning. She sees the entire world as a classroom that can be playfully engaged with to create change, and that by reflecting on this change we can learn. This asks for seeing the extraordinary in the mundane, to slow down and appreciate the beauty that is all around us. But this also requires scaffolding to provide structure and comfort. In this episode we dive deep into her experience with learning experiences around eco-tourism in Brazil.  In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  The importance of seeing learning everywhere, engaging with the whole world as classroom.  The importance of being willing and able to question even the fundamental assumptions of higher educational systems. The realization that the higher educational system is just a possible solution and not a fixed reality.The power of diversity in finding sustainable solutions for difficult challenges.  No one can be an expert in the future, but working together with a variety of perspectives can cause rethinking of mental models.  The importance of small interventions to create impact.  The power of slowing down and making change in your immediate ecology as rich places of learning and meaning-making.  Education as something that allows people to do important work.  The use of design processes to engage with regional complex challenges.  The importance of equality in learning spaces and the role of the facilitator in ensuring this.  External Links: From profit to purpose | ONE.WHY | Let's plant the future | The Netherlands (onewhy.org)  www.findthewhy.nl Mariëtte Huizinga | LinkedIn  

In this episode of The Regenerative Education Podcast I chat with Jens Gijbels, director of the FundamentalsAcademy and WeAreFundamentals. Jens is powered by a mission to redesign education for meaningful and purposeful participation in the grand challenges of our times. In this conversations we discuss how they bring this into practice in collaboration at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences where he with his team leads the 30 ECTS Co-Design Studio minor. Jens makes a passionate case for a more transformative and curiosity-based education that uses design and redesign to intentionally change the systems around us. He also stresses that this form of education can and should be fun. In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  The important of creating learning pathways that can be individual but also accreditated. Finding the magic between self-designed learning owners and guided learning.  The importance of bringing in people that do not have habit-formed lenses for systemic change.  The power of nurturing curiosity.  The importance of challenging our personal and collective mindsets and fixed understandings of the world so that we can remain creative in the face of complexity.  The power of short and intense bursts that focus on urgent and high impactful challenges in the lived-worlds of the learners.  The importance of surrounding your biophysical space in the process of what you are working on.   The flexibility of the current system, or more specifically the lack thereof, is one of the main barriers for connecting higher education to real world challenges.   External Links:  https://www.jensgijbels.nl/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jensgijbels/?originalSubdomain=nl https://www.fundamentalsacademy.nl/team 

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with dr. Johan Holmén, post-doc at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and co-teacher of Chalmer's Challenge Lab and accompanying courses. He recently finished his PhD at Chalmers in the field of transformative engineering education and was recently appointed to the head of the Swedish NGO Engineers for the environment. His expertise lies in backcasting from principles and guiding collective societal learning processes in the times of wicked problems. He started at the Challenge Lab as a master student before focussing his research on these forms of ecological learning configurations. And is currently working on Swedish materials for educator's to engage with these transformative forms of education in elementary institutions. In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  The importance of creating space for engaging with complex sustainability challenges that plague society.  The importance of mentorship in facing collective sustainability challenges.   Allowing the engagement of questions as part of the education and not just as preparation  for it.  The importance of transformative and reformative forms of learning as complementary parts of higher education.  The importance of combining the formal learning on societal change, leadership and transitions as well as practicing them.  Using higher education as a safe place for trying out long term futures that don't depend on short-termism. Placing learning in the centre instead of concrete output.  The power of working with people that engage with sustainability challenges on day-to-day basis and the humbleness that comes from this.   Using the campus as a playground/arena for relating and starting this type of work.  Training the inside-out dimensions of sustainability – dialoguing, design and co-creation, value-based interpretation and such.   Learning from taking responsibility of taking sustainability seriously.  The importance of methodological support, framework and tools to scaffold the learning experience as the learners engage with complexity.   External Links: Challenge Lab – Where learners lead and leaders learn (chalmers.se) Johan Holmén | Chalmers Johan Holmén (@assar56) / Twitter 

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with Philip Bernert a teacher-researcher active as a PhD student at the Institute of Ethics and Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research of the Leuphana University Lüneburg In Germany. Here he co-coordinates the transformative innovation lab with two other institutions in Germany (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment & Energy and The Free University of Berlin). We chat about how the transformative innovation lab, simultaneously ran in multiple cities across the country, all working on combining future studies and sustainability sciences. Leads to transformational change He is also a co-author of a handbook for educators who which to engage with transformative sustainability education which I highly recommend.  In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  The importance of gradually developing the capacity to engage in transdisciplinary sustainability projects.  The power of incorporating insighs from futures studies into transformative sustainability education.  The importance of bringing together different experts and knowledges to tackle wicked sustainability challenges.  The power of working with sustainability futures in the now, and the agency and challenges that come with working on wicked problems in the real world and not just as theoretical excercises. The importance of long-term perspectives for tackling sustainability challenges.  The possibility of kick-off events to explore and engage student’s expectations of the programme.  The power of bringing student outside of their regular biophysical environments (universities) where no one feels totally at home so that people can learn and be together. Combining reflexivity (who am I as a researcher, what is my perspective of research) and community-building.  The importance of providing space for reflections and taking the time to do this properly.  The importance of slow(ness) learning when dealing with complex sustainability challenges.  The importance of integrating the student’s perspective in the design and co-creation of this type of education.  External Links:  Philip BERNERT | PhD Student | Master of Science | Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg | Institute of Ethics and Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research (researchgate.net) Philip Bernert, M.Sc. | Leuphana Universität Lüneburg Projektteam – Transformative Innovation Lab (transformative-innovation-lab.de) Towards a Real-world Laboratory - Leuphana Universität Lüneburg 

Daniel Christian Wahl, an international thought leader in regenerative design and education, dives into the urgent need for a holistic approach to learning. He emphasizes the importance of integrating human patterns with bioregional contexts and advocates for transforming education from static problem-solving to adaptive participation. Wahl discusses the power of interdisciplinary knowledge, lifelong learning, and participatory worldviews. He encourages educators to promote experiential practices and deeply listening, ultimately calling for universities to become bioregional learning hubs.

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with dr. Domenico Dentoni, professor at Monpellier Business School, part of the University of Montpellier in Southern France.Domenico is fulll professor in business, transformation and resilience and specializes in using complexity-as-pedagogy with inductive approaches to teaching and research that has been highlighted for excellence by his students (while at Wageningen University) for years. In this chat we discuss the importance of scaffolding so that learners can engage with complexity that comes through his educational approach: placing the complexity of phenomena of everyday practices, of the mundane, and their relationship to systemic unsustainability as central in the teaching process.  In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  The importance of engaging with complexity in research, teaching and learning.  The power of curiosity and fascination with the world around me as a way of being in the world.  Balancing figuring things out for yourselves while providing support for your students to engage with it in a safe way.  The power of using inductive approaches to learning and teaching (placing real life cases before theories).   The importance of engaging with real life cases that learners can relate to and allowing learners to self-select knowledges and theories to engage with this case.  The importance of incorporating (meaningful) choice in the learning process.  Seeing learning akin to a design process of cycles of diverging and converging linked together with reflective practice.  The importance of making a purposive effort when working with real complexity cases that there is no right or wrong but different lenses and approaches that are more or less profound.  Finding a balance between the depth of analysis and effectiveness of identified interventions/solutions when working with higher education students.  Working with balanced teams (usually the most diverse teams possible – diversity of gender, experiences, disciplines).  External Links:  Dr. Domenico Dentoni - Montpellier Business School (montpellier-bs.com) Domenico Dentoni Domenico Dentoni | LinkedIn dr. D (Domenico) Dentoni - WUR 

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with Maria Garcia Alvarez, senior lecturer at the Global Project Management and Change Management at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences as well as a Earthcharter certified lecturer. She is a self-described educational rebel that works to transform education in line with life. Maria argues for the importance of helping learners to ask more, deeper and better questions in their quest to become change agents. In her education she leaves from a value-based approach to engaging with sustainability as education. She argues passionate for a re-association of our relationships with the rest of the natural world, sketching the role of an educator as facilitating the reconnecting with other forms of life and to learn to truly care and steward for the ecosystems of which we are part and expressions.  One of the ways she does this is by using the overview effect, showing the Earth in all of its beauty, grandeur and vulnerability of the little blue dot we call our home. In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  Seeing sustainability as a way of thinking and being as part of ecosystems. Start by challenging the worldviews of learners, the status-quo of their thinking, before working with transforming existing (eco)systems.  The importance of challenging what is normal, and what should be.  The power of realizing that the way we perceive and look at the world is socially constructed and can thus be reconstructured (much like the systems we have co-created over time).  The challenge and importance of reconnecting with ecosystems as educational institutions, including leveraging the strengths of (natural) ecological systems such as collaboration and regeneration.  The contradiction between the financial’s sectors impact on (higher) education and the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The difficulty of changing higher education at the institutional level and transgressing from the ivory tower to the entangled university of the future and the question whether it is possible to take the necessary steps to go through this transformation.  The need for deconstruction of the university and higher education so that a new version can be constructed that focusses on ecosystem learning.  Teachers can be key players in the transition towards a more sustainable future.  Systemic problems with hierarchial models in education that do not reward those that are practicing the change.  External Links Maria G. | LinkedIn María García Alvarez - Earth Charter Maria Garcia Alvarez | Social Innovation Lab About us | valuecreators (valuecreators-whc.com) Windesheim Honours College | International