As part of our first Teacher Developer Team meeting, Shepherd Urenje gave a very informative presentation on transformative learning. Shepherd works as a Programme Specialist in Education for Sustainable Development and is part of the Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development (SWEDESD). He calls for bringing new kinds of learning into our classrooms since we need to respond to the sustainability challenges we face, recycle our old ideas of teaching and learning, and collectively develop skills for new emerging job markets. According to Carl Frey, 60% of our future jobs have not even been developed yet!

With VAMOS’ focus on addressing wicked problems, transformative learning presents the way forward to promote changes in the ways we create knowledge, perceive the world, and develop new skills.

What needs to change?

After this brainstorming session, Shepherd introduced the Change Project Approach as a learning-centred action research project. A change project is a collectively developed institutional change initiative involving colleagues, students, communities, and other partners. This group of people forms a community of practice committed to working together and learning from each other. To prepare for change projects within VAMOS, the teacher developers agreed to conduct an institutional audit of current practices at their universities. What is working well and where can we improve?

We will keep you posted on answers to these questions after our Virtual Workshop in Transformative Learning in May!