UPV/EHU University of the Basque Country, Summer School, Donostia July 2010

1. Transformational Learning:
theory, practice and policy in the
construction of strategic innovation and
creativity
Dr Alan Bruce
ULS Dublin
EHU Donostia: July 2010

2. 1. Setting the Scene
 Stakeholder and community linkage
 Access and social inclusion
 Technological revolutions
 Responding to the market
 Transnational linkage

3. Innovation in a time of change
 Innovation supporting learning
 Innovation supporting work
 Re-evaluation of traditional methods and
structures
 Change and transformation needs
 Impact of globalization

4. Contexts of change
 Globalization
 Stratification
 Labour market transformation
 Rights and inclusion
 Access, quality and innovation in education

5. Responding to change
 Flexibility
 Diverse learners/digital immigrants
 Learning outcomes
 Pedagogical design
 Integrated learning
 Social capital and inclusion

6. Globalized imperatives
 Patterns of constant change
 Permanent migration mobility
 Outsourcing
 Flexible structures and modalities
 End of job norms
 Knowledge economy
 Structural inequalities

7. Globalized culture
 End of old certainties
 No return to ‘normal’
 Polymorphic media
 Fuzzy logic and postmodernism

8. Globalized education
 Professional training
 Best practice
 Standards and ethics
 Learner centred mythologies
 Innovation imperatives

9. Spectres at the gates
 Persistence and increase in inequality
 Permanent hopelessness of excluded
 Embedded violence
 Internal underclass
 Invisibility and ethnic difference

10. Urbanized futures
 Planet of Slums (Mike Davis)
 Informal economies
 Hypercities
 The normalization of brutality

11. Critical perspectives
 Traditional schooling
 Learning systems both reflect and lead
society
 Information…wisdom…understanding
 Critical enquiry - back to Illich
 Reflection and inquisitiveness
 Engaging with difference

12. Balkan ghosts
 Boundaries drawn to defend ‘Europe’
against the Other (Slavoj Zizek)
 Decalogue and Human Rights
 Ethnic cleansing and the desert of the real
 Love your neighbor not as mirror image…
but as Real (The Fragile Absolute)

13. 2. Defining innovation
 Innovation as Holy Grail of crisis resolution
 Construction of innovation as a new form of
alchemy
 Identified issues link:
policy
knowledge production
information explosion
ownership

14. Innovation and knowledge
 How does learning sustain innovation?
 Necessary focus on inherited structures and
delivery mechanisms
 Access and validation of knowledge have
become central concerns
 Focus on mediation role, hierarchy and
control
 What is now the role of the University?

15. Knowledge in transformation
 Commodification of knowledge
 Impact on education systems (Freire, Illich, Field)
 Impact on work (Braverman, Haraszti, Davis)
 Impact on community - alienation and anomie
 From community to networking
 Knowledge and learning now centrally linked as
product and process dimensions in the generation
of innovation

16. The outlook for knowledge
 Miller (2003) fundamentally optimistic about
transformational potential of new knowledge architectures
 Carneiro (2007) identifies
Paradigm shifts (industry-globalization-utopia)
Delivery modes (role-access-customized)
Driving forces (State-market-community)

17. Theorizing knowledge
 Dialogic learning: interaction- dialogue of equals -
foundations of trust
 Expansive learning: resoles contradictions-
dialectical-goes beyond existing to imagine
alternatives
 Collaborative learning: universities-companies-
governments-communities
 Formulations occur within a structure
 The framework and assumptions are those of
globalized late capitalism

18. Innovative knowledge in context
 If learning, working and production are controlled
innovation is at best powerless, at worst sinister
 At the core of innovation is an ability to assess
critically and express freely
 Fundamental to innovation is the ability to ask
questions that challenge existing relations
 Innovation is re-examining existing reality while
posing viable alternatives

19. Categories of innovation
Figueiredo (2009):
 Incremental: builds on existing thinking,
products, processes, organizations or social
systems
 Disruptive: addressed to people who do not
have solutions - compete with nothing since
no other solutions exist

20. Incremental innovation
 Addresses core of what already exists
 Airplanes that fly farther
 Batteries that last longer
 Computers that process faster

21. Disruptive innovation
 Evolves very rapidly
 Replaces traditional solutions
 Rooted in simple applications
 Personal computer
 Internet
 Mobile technologies

22. Policy focus
 How can we incubate creativity?
 Hw can we develop capacity for
innovation?
 Why have we progressed so little in formal
terms?

23. 3. Creativity
 Link between creativity and innovation
 Csikszentmihalyi: domain - field - person
 Creative teaching
 Big and little creativity
 Varieties of creativity
 Creativity as decision

24. Creativity for real
 Need to acknowledge context in which creativity
occurs
 Need to locate creativity as set of functioning
elements (Craft 2003):
Cognitive skills
Personality traits
Social
Cultural
Historical

25. Creativity - the sequel
 Not easily defined
 Packaging the invention
 Copying the unique
 Transferability
 Rights and acknowledgement

26. Linking the inventive
Innovation (Fagerbert 2003):
 Introduces novelty into the economic sphere
 Tends to cluster in certain sectors
 Explains difference in performance

27. Trends and directions
 Acceleration
 Collaboration and networks (external)
 Functional integration (internal)
 Collaboration with knowledge production
centres
 Increasing domination by market realities

28. Hard realities
 Role of the military
 Imperatives of war and violence
 Biotechnology
 Patenting biodiversity
 Genetics
 Social engineering
 Hard futures

29. 4. Transformational Learning
 Sociology of innovation
 Educational systems as networks of actors
who reinforce each other in stable
configurations
 Stable configurations prevent change
 Vested interest acts against innovation -
seen as threat

30. Engaging with systems
 It is possible to have incremental change
 Systems react to change even if they do not
initiate it
 The promising path is through disruptive
innovation which produces irreversible
change (Christensen, Disrupting Class,
2008)

31. Changing systems
 On-line courses
 Pilot schools
 Project based learning
 Experimental schools in degraded social
communities
 Non-formal learning
 Abolition of the teacher

32. Beyond changed systems
 Language, mathematics, science and …
 Creative and cultural development
 Moral autonomy
 Critical thinking distinct epistemologies of
science and engineering
 “Science explains what exists; engineering
creates what never existed” (Von Karman)

33. Embedding creativity
 Organic, reflective evaluative follow-up
 Analysis and modification
 Lasting partnerships between research units
and schools
 Action research teams
 Organic link to work and community
 Professional passion - out of the strait-
jacket

34. Supporting innovative learning
communities
 Community development
 Social solidarity
 Environmental management and conservation
 Arts and culture
 Sports and leisure
 Health and well-being
 Social inclusion and demographic change
 Advanced technologies

35. Traditional models
 Conservative
 Strict
 Inflexible
 Examination-driven
 Resistantto application of new
technologies

36. Potential models
 Pupil centred
 Competence driven
 Community focused
 Technological support
 International cooperation
 Learning process (application modes)
 Individual value (humanistic approach)

37. Strategic planning
 The innovation imperative
 Reprising discovery
 Challenging certainties
 Re-asserting values
 Defining rights

38. Themes
 Innovation and creativity as starting point not
destination
 Responsiveness to permanent change
 Staff competence and empowerment
 Engaging with excellence
 Doing the unexpected - better!
 Content validity and academic rigor
 Customer delight

39. European trajectories
 Rights of Man: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
 Thematic mythologies - social inclusion
 Legacies of struggle
 Hidden pasts:
colonialism, fascism, exterminism
 Neo-liberalism resurgent
 The Union in crisis

40. American trajectories
 Constitutional rights:
Life, Liberty,the Pursuit of Happiness
 All men are created equal… but…
 Final frontiers: immigration, assimilation, success,
opportunity
 Hidden poisons - slavery, race, eugenics
 Uncomfortable truths -
Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo
 Blogging in the desert - wikileaks and truth

41. Common trajectories
 Demographic changes: ageing and life
expectancy
 Women and labor market participation
 Immigration
 Cultural and religious difference
 Conflict and stress
 Urbanization

42. Further steps
 Increased application on new knowledge
 Open and distance learning technologies
facilitating learners and staff competence
 Transformation of traditional teaching role
to mentoring, guiding and facilitation
 Development of network of innovative best
practice at European level

43. From science to wisdom
The strangeness of reality consistently exceeds the
expectations of science, and the assumptions of science,
however tried and rational, are very inclined to encourage
false expectations. It is a tribute to the brilliance of science
that we can know such things. And it is also an illustration
of the fact that science does not foreclose possibility,
including discoveries that overturn very fundamental
assumptions, and that it is not a final statement about
reality but a highly fruitful mode of inquiry into it.
Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind (2010)

44. Fruitful inquiry
 Innovation based on questions, not answers
 Humanizing experience by understanding
 Purpose and meaning
 Assimilating past and present - profoundly
communicable
 Unearthing the human gem - Ernest Mandel
and the abyss of barbarism

45. Directions
 Avoiding innovation mantras and clichés
 The poetry of open discovery and delight
 Rescuing liberation in thought and practice
 Back to the future - the construction of
cathedrals and creativity in a fractured
Europe

46. Thank you
Dr Alan Bruce
ULS Dublin
Donostia July 2010