What does change management have to do with creative learning and teaching?

Reflections from the archives

A long time ago, in a place far far away … well alright not that long and not that far away but you get the point. I ran a small change management project for an institution I worked in.

The issue was that I moved from one of the newest and youngest members of staff to being responsible for making this happen.

I did the whole shebang internal, external stakeholder consultation etc so I am not boring you with process details instead I want to reflect on a very specific element:

The impact of lifewide (lifelong) learning

This was not too long after a student job in a big business consultancy over the summer, and having learned a very traditional top down management style in Germany. So I approached the first meeting very much as this is what needs to be done and this is how we do it.

Yeah I can see you laugh!

That went down as well as a ton of bricks. In the train back home I was reflecting on just how badly this first meeting went and while I watched the Kelvin go past the train window I had a Aha! moment.

Creative learning and teaching

a brief detour for context

I was in the early stages of my PhD and had just gotten my head around the concept of creative learning and teaching, which is defined by relevance, ownership and control.

Right for learning to be meaningful (relevance) to learners they need to understand the “why”: what does it do? How does it fit into the bigger picture? and even How does it relate to “real life”?

Ownership and control: I now usually cluster as student agency, they reflect the learners’ opportunities to take control of the learning situations (when, how, where, how much) and ownership I would love to summarize with the German term Weltaneingung–which reflects how confident the learners act not just within the learning situation, but how much that learning impacts lifewide/lifelong, this is the core of what we would talk about as agency in English¹.

Anyway, my Aha! moment:

Why don’t I apply these principles to change management? Make the change relevant to colleagues, enable colleagues to identify aspects they could take ownership and control off based on their interests and abilities.

It worked.

The next meeting went so much better.

So what?

Fast forward half a year after conclusion of the project: I visited the place for an open day event and the former colleagues had applied their creativity to run a fantastic, multi-facetted event, and their joy and pride in their work was tangible. Plus it added value to the institution.

I can’t provide more details without breaching confidentialities. However, I think the learning from this project was significant for me: applying a successful teaching methodology, to implementing a small change-management project works.

Because in lifewide (lifelong²) learning we are exploring how principles (learning) are transferable to different contexts (life domains³). And this is the description of the fourth defining feature of creative learning and teaching, and the feature that demonstrates the teaching methodology was successful: Innovation.

Footnotes

1. I think there is more differentiation and debate here but this is a blogpost not a book ↩︎
2. The UNESCO definition of lifelong learning includes lifewide learning ↩︎
3. check out this website for fantastic resources https://www.lifewideeducation.uk/lifewide-learning.html ↩︎