Transformative Future Education at the World Resources Forum

World Resources Forum 2015, Davos, Switzerland, October 11 – 14, 2015

Transformative Future Education

workshop organized by

World Academy of Art and Science – WAAS

World University Consortium – WUC

in partnership with

Center for Complex Systems in Transition – CST (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)

Workshop Chair: Garry Jacobs, CEO World Academy of Art and Science
Speakers: Garry Jacobs, Mark Swilling, Mila Popovich
Description:
This workshop identified and addressed a spectrum of pressing needs in education that stem from the evident lack of a transdisciplinary perspective, personal resonance, envisioning, and a sense of greater purpose and service to humanity.
It engaged a set of core questions in order to reach a broader, transdisciplinary vision of education with society for the future. Delivery of such a vision necessitates engaging and cultivating eco-social intelligence in a continual process of reinvention and reimagining from the perspective of the sustainability of soil, soul, and society. It requires comprehensive, contextual, and competence-based education for transformation of the critical state of affairs in our increasingly complex and integrated world. Responding to these issues, the workshop examined three particular factors – a) scope and significance of education for the future; b) its potential for social change; and c) emerging examples that point to the way ahead.
Some key features of education for the future that this workshop addressed are:

  1. Transdisciplinarity — overcoming the compartmentalization of knowledge
  2. Contextual learning — integrating education with life in the real world
  3. Leadership — person-centered education that develops the whole person

The workshop offered examples of education initiatives implemented by its co-organizing partners WAAS, WUC and CST as models of such future education, some already in practice and some in the making. Globally-focused futures, these innovative initiatives bring together international leaders, creatives, visionaries, policy makers, entrepreneurs, experts, and students into a global community of learners, planetary citizens, and change-makers.
Objective:
The workshop aimed to present and discuss urgently needed changes in education as well as envisioned possibilities for education in terms of accessibility, affordability and applicability in our fast changing world of complex and interrelated crises.
In presentation, discussion, and group work, the goal was equally to inform as well as imagine new integrative methodologies for engendering, promoting, and delivering eco-social conscious and transformative education for fairer and more sustainable collective futures.
Schedule:
3 hours

For more information, pl visit http://www.wrforum.org/workshops-world-resources-forum-2015-2/