Our departure point for realizing transformations is via participatory sense-making and learning with a multitude of stakeholders from academia, governance, business and civil society. We start from participatory self-directed life-long learning, though projects embracing complexity, situatedness, aesthetics, co-response-ability and co-development. Our field of application is broad — spanning from energy transition to healthcare to smart cities and beyond. Our learning eco-system supports us to deal with these societal challenges in a responsive and comprehensive manner, crossing domain-specific boundaries, and designing new material arrangements, through which we jointly change practices to navigate the transforming societies.
Background and aim of the project
For well over 20 years, we have been exploring new educational practices. In the early years, we did this through the past revolutionary educational approach of the department of Industrial Design (founded in 2000) which was based on self-directed, life-long, competency-centred learning. With help from the Comenius Senior Fellowship and two other research projects on educational innovation, we aimed at developing the next step in life-long learning: a multi-stakeholder participatory learning eco-system for transforming existing and developing new alternative practices to address societal challenges and engage with the world in co-responsible ways.
Design and implementation process
Using a reflective research through design process (closely related to action research), we have developed our learning eco-system through 5 design cycles of half a year each. In every cycle, we developed new interventions (platforms, tools, methods, organization etc.), finetuned the underlying theories and pedagogy, strengthened the connections with external partners, and evaluated the adjusted practices with all the involved stakeholders, thus maturing our envisioned learning eco-system.
The developed TP learning eco-system supports a learning community of diverse individuals and perspectives, from Bachelor students to full professors, from internal to external; everyone teaches, and everyone learns. All participants have multiple roles, e.g., of coach, expert, project owner, mentor, and are also involved as curious, critical individuals willing to share perspectives and experiences. The various activities, such as workshops and design projects, are means and drivers for learning together and developing new practices and material arrangements for alternative paradigms addressing our societal challenges, such as bridging cultural divides, an inclusive healthcare system or sustainable energy systems.
TP is based on 5 core principles: complexity, situatedness, aesthetics, co-response-ability and co-development. The developed blended learning environment offers dozens of dedicated tools, methods, theories and examples support the joint development of new designs and practices based on these 5 principles. The eco-system enables student and professional learners to explore together how to transform existing or create new practices. We consider transforming practices not only towards society, e.g., by transforming energy practices but also towards the learning community itself, as well as every individual.
Evaluation and results
The results show that the TP eco-system is especially valuable for people and institutes interested to educate and learn towards new paradigms and unknown futures, to learn to become resilient for undetermined developments and shocks, to learn to embrace complexity, and to educate current and future generations taking co-response-ability for our world and each other. Due to its paradigmatic shift, it is not an easy approach, since it embraces, e.g., ambiguity, uncertainty and risk. Hence, the best way to engage, is by doing, reflecting in/on action, and finding partnerships with likeminded stakeholders.
Products and documentation
Supporting literature
- Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Macmillan Company.
- Hummels, C. & Vinke, A. (2009). Developing the competence of designing intelligent systems. (Eindhoven designs; Vol. 2). Eindhoven University of Technology
- Hummels, C. (2017). Get a Dutch innovation mindset. In: The Dutch way in education: Teach, learn and lead the Dutch Way. OJMS, pp. 203-224
- Ingold, T. (2017). Anthropology and/as Education. Routledge
Comenius Senior Fellowship 2018
