Educating change agents
TU/e’s Research on Transformative Education conducted by Koretsky and Wieczorek (2024) and by Roefs (2024) provides six guidelines to educators to engage with transformative education and train change agents:
- Integrating a sustainable rationale : the teacher’s teaching and learning approach includes social, environmental and economic components and emphasizes creating a balance between them.
- Orienting curriculum toward grand societal challenges: the teacher focuses their teaching toward questions of grand societal challenges, such as climate change, social inequalities or biodiversity loss.
- Promoting a plurality of worldviews: the teacher includes a socio-technical plurality and invites students to consider technology in a broader context by integrating technology sciences and social sciences.
- Employing alternative pedagogies: the teacher engages with non-traditional ways of educating, such as flip-the-classroom, debate sessions, challenge-based education, and more.
- Engaging with transdisciplinary education: the teacher seeks collaboration with external stakeholders from industry, government, and society.
- Adopting a systemic approach: the teacher actively promotes a systemic approach to change in relation to the content of their course(s).