Towards Regenerative Learning Ecologies in Higher Education — Designing Mission Impact
‘As long as most education is only aimed towards external sustainability transitions but continues to ignore what the transition towards a regenerative society means for our own practice we will not be enablers of better futures and at best do no (further) harm.’
That was said to me at the beginning of 2020, about halfway through the academic year, in what now seems a lifetime ago. But I’m forgetting my manners, I should introduce myself first. My name is Bas, a starting scholar, activist, designer who is passionate about learning and higher education. I currently work at The Hague University of Applied Sciences within the Centre of Expertise Mission Zero where I explore new forms of learning and how we can integrate these into existing higher education frameworks. What drives me in this quest is a personal and moral sense of urgency to play a part in the emerging discourse on deep ecology, sustainability, circularity and regenerative cultures and our collective challenge to reorient education to be a part of the solution instead of an extension and repeat of pressing climate challenges. My aim is to explore the role of (higher) education in this new story of how humankind can relate to nature.
The impetus for my colleague’s response was a conversation at an early stage in our exploration to start a graduation student-lab to unite education, research and regional sustainability transitions. This lab was initially intended to tackle wicked problems (challenges which are extremely interrelated with a multiplicity of systems such as biodiversity, climate change, mobility and loneliness in urban environments) in our region. We wanted to tackle these problems in interdisciplinary teams of students: to use their creativity to find innovative solutions as well as to identify critical questions and new directions for hopeful futures. Unfortunately, the educational administrative? system did not allow us to start this lab expressing responses along the lines of … ’I’d really want that but it simply isn’t possible!’
Usually, when I stumble on a perceived impossibility I get excited, because it means there is great opportunity for disruption. So instead of running away from impossibility, I run towards it, sometimes to my own detriment. Our quest, as activists, researchers and educators in Mission Zero is to play a positive part in sustainability challenges that our (bio)region faces transitioning towards clean energy, circularity and inclusivity. As education has such a central place in our societies, we should not only look at the outside world and ignore the implications for education, because then we will never be able to achieve the changes in structures, worldviews, values and ways of being that are required to realize these transitions.
While the graduation lab is still a concept, as most educational changes it represents a step of my journey towards integrating regenerative learning ecologies into higher education.
Regenerative Learning Ecologies or RLEs:
I hear you think… What are RLEs?! I should mention that the concept is still heavily under development but I will do my best to share what I understand as RLEs at this point in time to the best of my ability. Regenerative Learning Ecologies are dynamic constellations of learning-based change that facilitate the development of regenerative capacity — the ability to lead collective learning-based action towards regenerative futures. Where formal education joins forces with stakeholders in the region around the institutions to tackle wicked challenges, that no stakeholder or discipline can tackle alone. Thus RLEs consist of the totality of relations between stakeholders, forces and facilitative technologies that act upon and within these ecologies and the learning that flows between and through these relationships.
These RLEs are normatively aimed to facilitate transformation (a qualitative change in consciousness) towards a regenerative state (one that gives back more the planet than it takes) and invites a multiplicity of values, ideas, peoples, forms of learning and knowledges to relearn how we relate to and connect with space, ourselves and others. This necessarily goes beyond learning-to-know (cognitive facts and figures) and includes learning-to-be (what does it mean to live here), learning-to-care (about oneself, others, the place and future generations) and learning-to-anticipate (learning towards and from possible futures). As simply ‘knowing’ limits our regenerative capacity to what is already known and excludes other aspects of human complexity such as our subjective well-being, need for love, connection and (critical) hope. Here, there is a strong overlap with humanistic-, social-, eco- and positive psychology and positive education in the form of (re)generating well-being for life.
In terms of geo-spatial dimensions these represent large areas (multiple cities, provinces, counties or even entire countries) and are made up of multiple Regional Regenerative Learning Ecosystems (RRLEs) which focus on boroughs, streets and small villages. Thus, regenerative learning ecologies are dynamic and relational constructs that consist of a combination of RRLEs to facilitate context-sensitive and learning-based social change by facilitating boundary crossing learning within the overall RLE. Following dr. Zachary Steiner argument that the role of (higher) education then becomes to facilitate, and potentially to lead, the connection of students and these communities as a bioregional learning hub within the regenerative learning ecology. As well as to facilitate learning and connection between these communities within the overall ecology.
That way institutions of formal education move beyond individual personal growth or transformation to synergistically contribute to transition of the region and transformation of the learners as an activist form of research and education based in social change. Developing the capacity of the leaders of tomorrow to engage communities in regenerative learning processes and collective action for better tomorrows. In addition to learning sciences, the RLEs concept draws heavily from relational philosophy/ethics, sustainability transitions, system’s thinking, positive psychology, future studies and transformative learning.
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While the earliest form of the concept as a student-lab has died (for now), it has acted as a seed of change that resulted in a new minor course. A minor is a sub-component of a higher education process (that usually lasts one full semester) that allows students to explore topics they are passionate about outside their programme or to dig deeper into a specific specialty within their programme.
We will use this minor to explore the design of such RLEs and RRLEs, starting with one region (shown later) with the intent to simultaneously run the minor in 3+ RRLEs within the ecology from February 2021, scaling to the entire RLE we engage in (roughly a dozen living labs within the Province of South-Holland, The Netherlands) by the 2021–2022 academic year. The focus here will be on the learning and role of the educator in relation to the students and other regional stakeholders . A potential lens to explore these relations and webs of learning are the Life Principles or the principles required for life to be conducive to life.
Over time, these insights will allow us to help other educators engage in RLEs in meaningful ways and act as catalysts for learning-based social change.
Together, the conceptualization of RLEs and enacting them in practice, form part of a story of my becoming a scholar, educator, change agent and regenerative leader. In the rest of this article, I will share my experience of the process of designing the minor and I will sketch an outline of this educational prototype in our (Western Netherlands) context. I hope that by sharing this you may feel inspired and possibly even join me on this journey so that our stories can intertwine.
The Beginnings
As anyone who has worked in educational transition and change knows, it can be a painstakingly slow, difficult, and challenging process. To explore the student graduation lab and its chance to succeed, I spoke to more than thirty teachers, managers and researchers. The vision that emerged was that we wanted to challenge the dominant paradigm of learning-to-know. As learning-to-regenerate goes beyond cognitive knowing and requires space for various ways of learning thereby inviting l learning-to-be, learning-to-care and learning-to-anticipate as equally valuable components of learning for hopeful and desirable futures for wicked challenges.
How did we go about that? A bit naively this actually started very simply with following in the footsteps of for example The Challenge Lab. We set out to explore what would happen if we bring together diverse groups of learners to break away from established paradigms ‘in the real world’ and unleash them on wicked problems. This journey started with a lot of hope, riding on the wave of a major educational innovation project, which I had the honour of leading the year before. This project consisted of guiding a collective redesign of our ICT programme that led to 600 students annually developing innovative IT start-ups to tackle the Sustainable Development Goals. The initial talks around the graduation lab were coloured by this previous success and could be described as quite gleeful. What really supported the level of conversations was the visual sketch of my ideas created by my good friend Jefta Bade. Together we discovered that the initial concept revolved around two synergetic goals:
- To research transformative learning for regenerative futures
- To lead regional change towards these futures
We tried to visualize these goals in the realm of a 20-week process — the time it takes to graduate in the Dutch higher education system. Some of the key aspects identified were: communities and networks, space for creativity, an iterative design process, future-oriented, social transformative learning and regional impact? This process led us to focus primarily on the role, practice, and embodied experience of our own university in a regenerative future!
Running into Barriers
Using this sketch, chats with staff and students were held during which recurrent obstacles quickly became apparent. One of these obstacles would plague me for weeks: ‘Great idea! But impossible because of x… y… z…’ The arguments that usually followed represented a limitation in thought and perspective more than an actual impossibility. Frequent critiques went along the lines of:
- ‘but the graduation is to prove individual competence, how will you assure this if they worked together?’
- ‘the purpose of the graduation is to prepare for this specific career <insert their own expertise>’
These lines of reasoning reveal tacit mental models that are part of a wider narrative of unsustainability that is pervasive in our society and predominant in current educational practice. A narrative that sees education purely as a preparation towards a specific career such as chemical engineering or accountancy. In other words, the educational system prepares us to be a drone ant, or a scout, able to engage with one task very well but unable to engage with generalist, transdisciplinary complexity. An education aimed towards creating economic value at the cost of everything else: what Freire would refer to as the banking model of education. This model frequently surfaced through the language of these conversations such as ‘we are a factory, my job is to get them through the process as effectively as possible’ or ‘my students only care about learning how they can make money’. Together these expressions appear to be representative of the deeply entrenched neoliberal perspective which has seeped through our society. I am happy to share that the latter seems to be wrong as indicated by the overwhelming number of students who want to collaborate with the Mission Zero Research Centre.
Counterarguments to this story run along the lines that learning is relational in nature and that the transition challenges we face require rethinking of our worldview and perspective of what we considered normal.
· The thesis as individual proof of competence argument
Even when ‘written’ by a single person a thesis always represents a collective learning process from which the written artefact emerged. A stronger argument for this argument would be if the thesis is only a test of the individual writing ability in the entire educational curriculum. But if this is the case I would question the validity of examining writing only at a graduation level in the first place!
· Education as preparation for the economy
This argument builds on an industrial heritage where skill-specific ability was key to career advancement. This, as most educators will have noticed (hopefully), does no longer represent the working lives of generation Z or the complexities of today’s wicked challenges.
What these responses reveal though is a critical tension between the purposes of education as perceived through the old narrative of unsustainability and a newly emerging story of education-as-regeneration. While exploring the philosophical implications of this new narrative on the role and purpose of educators and education is beyond the scope of this article, it does lead to a critical question that we as educators have to ask ourselves: What does regenerative education look like and how can I play a part in actively shaping this?
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The Educational Prototype
Based on early discussions, the concept sketch that emerged (visualized above) starts with a short theoretical boot camp (1–5 weeks) where students would be introduced to key aspects of becoming agents of change such as: system’s thinking, critical hope, futuring, focusing on strengths, exploring the self, designing regenerative cultures and reflection-in-action. Where hope is represented as critical action towards desirable and regenerative futures. While the focus of this boot camp is on theory, they would already go into the field to experience in real-time what these concepts are about. This allows the students to explore the ecology around the school and its wealth of learning opportunities. And to learn from and with local communities about pathways towards regenerative futures. Bringing the students to where the learning happens and connecting them to local sustainability transition niches where they could question mental models in the field and engage in (leading) a community learning process, combining action research with learning-based regional change within a region.
These insights together with those derived from the conversations conducted resulted in a next educational design iteration, which is sketched out below.
Alas! As Chaves et al (2018) would say, the form of a student-lab (at least specifically for graduations) died. It’s death however, served as nourishment towards Mission Impact. These included a focus on design-driven action research, a role for autoethnography as well as a subdivision of the semester long learning process into distinct five week phases to create a clear structure to scaffold learning. The journey so far was filled with moments of joy, meaningful conversations and felt like taking three steps back for every (small) stumble forwards.
Taking a Chance
By happenstance, if there is such a thing, I discussed our attempted student-lab project with a teacher-researcher colleague. It turned out that he had inherited an existing research-oriented semester in the design engineering programme that had been dwindling in popularity for a variety of reasons.e. As our (educational) research interests aligned strongly we figured that 1 + 1 = 3 and decided to say ‘fuck it’. Let’s see what happens if we propose the concept of the graduation lab as a way to redesign and reinvigorate this semester and turn it into a minor.
What followed was a whirlwind of design, conversation, iteration and testing as well as races against numerous clocks where we were able to get a final concept approved as a semester long minor in just under three months, this process normally takes up to two years. The educational manager of the design programme was (and is!) excited for this opportunity to further enhance the existing connections between research and education and to explore a new approach to learning. What helped was that this manager had a background in educational sciences and understood our intentions. This is quite impressive as at this point these were mostly rants towards a general direction Luckily, the five week structure that emerged from the previous stage was very similar to the regular examination cycle of the design programme. So we threw away most of the old semester and set out to design the semester from our regenerative perspective. Now with minor students instead of graduation students (usually year 3 students instead of year 4), but with the same gusto and hope that we started from. After a few early discussions this led to a daylong design workshop, the results of which can be seen below.
I always start my educational design from an imagined ‘perfect’ state before I start worrying about practical limitations such as budgets and the number of hours available for teaching and development. This occasionally leads to overworking but starting from a wide realm of possibilities usually results in more creativity in this stage and uncovering pathways which were previously hidden. The design workshop was used as basis for a sketch that we brought with us to explore the concept with students (next image).
Towards Mission Impact
With this rough outline of the aspects for each phase, we were about to jump head first into the development process. We had a few sessions before the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Netherlands as by storm and forced all of our work online instantaneously. During one of these pre-COVID-19 sessions, we discussed our sketched out visions with students representing the process & food technology, industrial design engineering and climate and management programmes. We met every other week for a visual chat (a chat where I as facilitator visualized the discussion through sketchnoting, intended to create shared mental models through visualization). In these chats I would lead a discussion and visualize this as a basis for the educational design progress (left image below).
The students and myself explored and reached out to coordinators and educators of other regenerative-oriented and innovative educational concepts such as the minor Creating Resilient Cities at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences and the Challenge Lab at Chalmers University of Technology. This period consisted of a lot of creativity, exploration of alternatives and above all a lot of fun!
At this point, the first phase of Mission Impact theoretical deep dive was filled with similar topics like those mentioned before. Primarily focusing on learning-through-teaching for the students. Subjects covered include a general introduction to regenerative and circular discourse before going through sustainability leadership, consciousness, complexity theory, living system’s thinking and transition design. Once we had an overview of the theoretical deep dive I remember thinking: ‘Is this even possible?’.
A Precarious Balancing Act
‘As we are now in the process of designing this minor, which we will start in September. The situation is highly political and difficult. The irony is not lost on me that a minor designed to develop leadership and design-driven action research with students is forcing me to develop those capacities in myself further during the design process. What is particularly challenging is the balancing of perspectives and powers, between my co-coordinator, the research centre, the educational programme, my own research and ambitions and the interdisciplinarity of targeted students… I feel a sense of being lost. How can I balance these relationships with my own research ambitions and requirements? How can I balance this with pursuing a PhD in sustainability-oriented ecologies of learning? How will I balance this without losing myself?’.
Paraphrased from personal diary 16–1–2020.
I greatly enjoy and value aesthetics in my personal practice and learning and often result to visualization (albeit usually of an enormously unimpressive quality) to organize my own thinking. To engage in a dialogue with shape, colour and explore my inner thoughts. I used the following spiral sketch, inspired by the living spiral framework to look at Mission Impact as part of a larger whole of students becoming regenerative change agents. Placing it within a developmental spiral of learners becoming agents of change through continued engagement with regenerative-oriented learning and research (increasingly flowered to represent the growth in regenerative capacity — the ability to lead collective learning and action towards regenerative futures).
Through an iterative process of discussions with students and teachers a reconceptualization of the purpose of this first phase was realized. The central question in this inquiry was: Is it the purpose to leave the students as experts or extremely knowledgeable on the topics mentioned or just to introduce them to these concepts so that they can explore these further, based on their interests and needs, while they tackle their wicked sustainability challenges?
We decided on the latter. Reducing the importance of learning-to-know to create (more) space for other aspects of education-as-regeneration such as being, feeling, caring and doing. This also led to the self-realization that even we cannot escape the hegemony of neoliberal culture as we internalized the faux-hierarchy of unsustainability learning which places cognitive knowing on a pedestal above all other forms of knowing. In response, the scope of the first phase of the minor was changed to introduce the different aspects and forms of learning required for regenerative learning-processes. This also reinvigorated a critical personal learning journey to continuously reflect on my own unconscious bias privileging learning-to-know.
- How can I critique current educational praxis if I am afraid to step outside of it or is there potential for (personal) transformation in this uncertainty?
Then we all went into hiding
I was in the university when our prime minister announced all higher education would shut down the very same day. The week before this shutdown I was still discussing random daily educational troubles such as additional exams or rescheduling classes which instantly and frankly since then have seemed meaningless. The development of the minor froze to a halt as all hands were on deck to translate our activities to online offerings as fast as humanly possible. As we, like most other institutions of learning have had to transition to a fully-online reality overnight. For a few weeks the minor was in developmental hell before I got adjusted to our collective new normal.
This new normal posed an additional layer of uncertainty for the future of face-to-face education and when this can resume. I hope that when it does, it can do so in a regenerative way. The COVID-19 situation resulted in difficult discussions whether the pilot of this educational experiment should be postponed and made recruiting enough students for a first pilot almost impossible. What were the cons against starting you may ask? To be fair, there were many, and definitely much more than pros to start.
- I didn’t know if it would be allowed.
- I didn’t know if we could protect the transformative and regenerative character of the educational design in an online constellation.
- I didn’t know if we would have time next to the regular education that would likely still be online and had to be prepared for.
- I didn’t know if we could reach enough students.
- I didn’t know if I am capable enough to do this, both intellectually and professionally.
You may wonder, why would you still start at all? Honestly, with the scale of the sustainability crisis we all face, we didn’t feel like pulling the plug was a moral choice we could make in good conscience. [SL1] As any (small) step towards more regenerative futures are steps in the right direction. So against all logic, here we are, ready to start a new minor in a digital reality with students across Europe. Has it been challenging?…hell yes. Will it be challenging going forward?…more than likely. Will we persevere?…absolutely.
A new challenge
After months of hard work and pivoting, the deadline for student registration had passed and we did not reach the minimum number of students to run the pilot (12). Largely, because all physical recruiting events were cancelled due to COVID-19 and there were no online replacements in time. A new minor is already at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting students as you don’t have an established track-record and don’t benefit from mouth-to-mouth recruitment amongst students. It’s also a particularly risky time for students to pick an experimental pilot as their choice as it adds an additional layer of uncertainty to a time of already great complexity. Luckily, after a lot of additional marketing and great help from friendly voices in the university we were able to attract enough students to start our pilot (I later found out the design programme had been communicating to their own students they weren’t allowed to pick this minor as it was also a semester for them, after this was administrative hurdle was removed the minimum number to run was quickly surpassed).
So I had decided to go for the craziest option, to persevere in face of adversity. At this point, I relaxed for barely a minute before realizing the next big challenge was waiting and ready to put up some gloves and go for a round. While it is really cool to have such a diversity of topics and forms of learning to be introduced before going into the field, very few people (and definitely not me!) can teach all of those aspects effectively and we hadn’t even found a community yet to learn with!
Dark Times
Throughout this time it has felt like two twin colossus Hope and Despair have been battling for supremacy. While Despair has come close to winning this battle on occasion, so far, Hope has prevailed. There were times when the frequency and intensity of these challenges led me to the brink. This resulted in periods of hopelessness, tiredness and apathy which were cyclical with joy, fascination and engagement. These feelings were heightened by the current reality we face, a period which dramatically increased working pressure while reducing social connection to a minimum (which as we know from positive psychology is one of the main contributors to happiness). A time, during which unfortunately I got quite ill for the better part of March. A time, during which I was lonely, sad, and at times came close to being defeated. I considered pulling the plug and caught myself thinking ‘let’s just postpone this whole thing for a year, maybe it’s just not the right time to be doing this’. I even questioned if, working as an activist researcher for educational change, was really what I wanted to be doing with my life. The simple truth is… we just don’t have time for education not be an active part in the solution for the climate challenges we face.[SL2]
The reason I got into education and research of learning is because I see it as a one of the key enablers of a larger cultural transition towards a regenerative state, this possibility and hope that it represents is the source of power that extinguished the negativity during this time. I also had a few amazing colleagues who went out of their way to reach out to me in these difficult times.
‘It feels like whenever I think we are done. That everything is ready to go and we can start there is another hoop to jump through hidden beneath some rock… obscure rules only known to a select few who always find the most inopportune times to spring out of hiding and surprise us with a left hook to try and take us down… I just want to experiment with this ecology perspective on activist learning to make a change…’
(excerpt from personal communications with one of the student-designers).
What about the Teaching
As restrictions related to COVID-19 are slowly released, I reached out in my network from working on the circular transition and in the field of sustainability generally, this led to twenty-five different guest experts who have committed to contribute to Mission Impact. The amount of positivity that I ran into once people heard about what we are trying to do was amazing and heartwarming. An affirmation that even though it may be a crazy dream, it is one worth realizing. The majority of the contributions (lectures, talks, workshops and such) during the minor will even be open to the public and shared on social media afterwards!
The contributors include professors, researchers, master students, practitioners and policy makers who are coming together to co-create this experiment. They also provided additional feedback on the minor guides and design and provided key materials for the students to learn more during their learning journeys. Each week for the first phase of Mission Impact the students will engage with these guests every Monday and Tuesday so that they can be introduced to a wide variety of perspectives which they can explore throughout the rest of their experience.
The Context
Through our work on the circular transition in the province of South-Holland (where we are situated) we met representatives of I’m Binck. An organization that represents the Binckhorst area in The Hague. This region is fascinating for a lot of reasons.
- It is openly committed to becoming the most circular and regenerative bioregion in the Netherlands by 2030, while the national ambition is full circularity by 2050.
- A further 3000–4000 homes are planned for construction in the area, but there are no plans for grocery stores, schools and limited sport venues.
- It is heavily industrialized (for an urban region) with heavy industry such as concrete production and waste processing occurring within the region.
- It’s right next to our university!
Initially, we had wanted and worked with the municipality of the Hague to secure a physical space in the region to run Mission Impact from so that we could actively engage with the stakeholders in the region not just during the action-research phases but during the educational phase as well. The purpose being simple: We want to learn how a region has to transform together with professional stakeholders within their communities. The COVID-19 situation, as well as other legal guidelines (safety and such) made this extremely difficult. Together with the I’m Binck board we decided to try and engage with this collaboration digitally, at least for now! We will still try to do so by making the educational activities as public as possible. Together with the bioregion the following overarching challenge has been defined: How could we (re)design the Binckhorst bioregion to enhance compassion, creativity and connection in a regenerative future? This will be the starting point for all groups of transdisciplinary teams of students (3–4) to engage with the bioregion. Each team will be responsible to discover a representative wicked problem in the region they can tackle to contribute to the overarching challenge.
It’s going to be very exciting, and only a little (read a lot) terrifying, to see what and how the students will discover these with local stakeholders. But also to explore what designing, running, teaching and leading education connected to such a RRLE asks from the educator. Will the students focus on something concrete like energy? food? biodiversity? or something more abstract such as loneliness? social justice? or education? It’s all fine and I look forward to following the developments as they unfold.
Mission Impact v1 — What will it be like?
Phase 1 — in the first phase, students will engage with a variety of guest experts and co-learn with other students and external guests to explore a variety of topics related to leading regenerative learning-processes. This includes both externally and internally oriented aspects of leading these processes such as values, consciousness and worldviews. These sessions will be online and for the most part openly available (links will be shared through LinkedIn), recorded and shared in the spirit of Open Education.
Every other week students will engage in a guided collective reflective workshop that has been purposely designed to explore their and my own transformative learning journeys. At the end of each phase the students are asked to create a reflective piece of art that explores their lived-experience as individuals in relation to the other and the context in which they did their regenerative research. I will also attempt to do this myself. They will also provide regenerative research briefs for review as a team. The latter of which will be numerically graded while the former is a knock-out requirement to receive educational credits.
Phase 2 — In the second phase, students will engage with designerly action research and work towards the design of an initial toolkit or workshop to explore images of regenerative futures with local stakeholders. During this phase they will receive coaching twice a week from a colleague and myself respectively to support them in their research, learning and change making. The bi-weekly collective reflective sessions will continue and they will also close this phase with an individual reflective piece of art.
Phase 3 — In the final research phase, the students co-create speculative artefacts from regenerative futures designed to create critical learning (through critical dialogue and aesthetics) with the stakeholders in the bioregion. These will be presented in a (digital) exposition. In contrast to the first two stages, the art piece this time reflects the entire learning journey instead of only a single phase. This also marks the completion of the educational period and if successful the educational credits (30 ECTS) will be awarded at this point.
Phase 4 — This is an optional phase where we will try to turn all the findings and the experiences into a collective publication, likely an e-magazine. The resulting artefact will be open access and shared through the research centres website.
Looking Forward — Nerves, Excitement, Hope
So, after almost a year of trials, difficulties, joy, pain, frustration and learning. I will explore one approach to incorporate a regenerative learning ecology into formal higher education after the summer. In addition, I will also work on a conceptual paper exploring RLEs and RRLEs at other institutes of formal higher education to find patterns, similarities and differences and create a shortlist of educators that can be potential interviewees.
I would lie if I’d say I feel completely ready and am not a bit worried about how well this will go. I know it’s going to be challenging and frankly, it may fail. I worry I won’t have the time or that I will (un)consciously try to try to pull back towards a form of education I have experience with.
But…what could have been prepared has been prepared. A great line-up of international experts from research, practice and policy are ready and willing to help us make this pilot a great success. It feels a bit like staring into an abyss and blindly assuming, based on faith, hope and optimism that it will just be a great adventure into the future of regenerative education. Partly, this is due to the great experiment that awaits me. Enhanced by the choice of exploring autoethnography to explore my own lived-experience as a designer, leader and educator exploring, stumbling and learning on my own transformative path towards a regenerative education. I hope this story, and mine in general, will play a part in a larger story of transformation towards regenerative learning ecologies.
At the same time, I also feel empowered by the trust that has been placed in me by my colleagues both within and out of the university and that they continue to place in me. I am indebted in particular to my direct colleagues and three amazing students, who have recently graduated and will spread their wings as they continue on their own stories. From the bottom of my heart, thank you Joeri, Tim and Dana for the laughter, joy and insights. I would also like to thank the colleagues, friends, mentors and students who have contributed through feedback or dialogue to this piece.
Without your creativity and support this would not have been possible! I look forward to following the rest of your stories and perhaps will get to play a further part in it someday.
A small group of students has decided to give Mission Impact a shot for which I am grateful and feel a sense of responsibility. I look forward to co-creating this learning process with them further and pray I will not disappoint them (too much). I know I will work to the fullest of my capacities to not let their trust down as I prepare to get in this canoe and brace for the rapids. I also look forward to sharing this experience, and the insights that unfold, with you as this story spirals towards a regenerative learning ecology.
For anyone who would like to receive the full minor guide and/or contribute to this development in whatever capacity, please feel free to reach out to b.vandenberg@hhs.nl or through LinkedIn.
