Summary of the project
The world is facing a polycrisis, which calls for (applied) universities to urgently transform their education in an adequate and timely manner (European Commission, 2021). The Transforming Practices for Societal Transformation program aims to support educational transformation, building upon Tim Ingold’s concept of “minor key”, assuming open-endedness, experimentation, and vulnerability (Ingold, 2018), and Gert Biesta’s concept of world-centered education, as a third way of education that puts the world in the center by educating students to the world (Biesta, 2022). The Transforming Practices program does this by developing a community-centered, Al-enhanced, blended learning platform that enables students, educators, researchers, and partners from government, business, and society to jointly learn how to address complex societal challenges and engage with the world in co-responsible ways.
Aim of the project
Transforming Practices for Societal Transformation is a long-term research program aiming to
revolutionize higher education by developing a lifelong learning environment with the use of emergent technologies, to support multi-actor education in society focusing on addressing complex societal challenges such as climate justice, energy transition and mental healthcare.
The Boost! Project started in 2019, in close connection to the Comenius Senior Fellow 2018 project “STIMULEER: Socio-Technical system Innovation enabled through a MUlti- stakeholder LEarning Eco-system () and building upon the Leren in Eindhoven 2030 project called “Learning on the Move”. Over the years we have explored and developed together with students, educators, researchers and external partners from government, business and society, an educational environment and platform with a variety of blended learning tools. The various iterations have resulted in, e.g., the Repository of Transformation (RoT), which is a continuously evolving learning platform to research, understand, develop and drive societal transformation processes and impact.
The software infrastructure and related toolset of RoT are designed to be context-dependent, allowing for flexible and multilateral access and use of data. RoT is centered on small data ‘points’ of content, such as a participant, an event, a prototype, a report, a reflection or a short story. The setup allows for participants (students, educators, researchers and external partners) to choose their own entry point, perspective, and way of working, which allows them to add, relabel, rearrange and review data through different lenses and points of view making use of a variety of interwoven digital Apps and (physical) tools. By relating and connecting all the data points, the participants can jointly find patterns and learn together about societal challenges and societal transformation. RoT is constantly being improved. The current set-up focuses on 1) adding, editing and evaluating data (e.g., with the Contribute, Reflect and Analyse apps), 2) exploring specific constellations of data (e.g. with the Participants, Dashboard and Documentaries apps) and 3) back-end maintenance (e.g. with the Access app and API).
This Transforming Practices education program researches how to transform higher educational systems towards life-long, minor key, world-centered learning environments, by researching, questioning and transforming learning paradigms, values, culture, transdisciplinarity, educational organization, decision-making processes, and interaction between educational institutes and society. It explores novel approaches to multi-actor challenge-based learning that can support mission-centered innovation through place and time-independent collaborative learning environments and platforms. The approach is currently being scaled up to be used in European communities, such as the EIT Culture & Creativity.
Results and learnings
Conference paper ((2021) - Education as a transforming practice: designing together for complex, sustainable living (806 Kb)
Book (2022) – Designing for Transforming Practices – Maps and Journeys (115 Mb)
Book chapter (2017) - Get a Dutch innovation mindset. In: The Dutch way in education: teach learn and lead the Dutch Way (2,6 Mb)
Book (2017) - LOTM : learning on the move (3,2 Mb)
Pamflet (2021) Transforming Practices Squad
Website overview (2021) Comenius Senior Fellow project STIMULEER
Website project summary (2025) Repository of Transformation
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