Our mission is to support people to engage deeply with their worldviews – empowering them to expand mindsets, collaborate constructively, and initiate creative change in a world in crisis.
We do this through developing transformative learning journeys that invite people to explore the ‘big questions’ that worldviews give answers to; exchange meaningfully with those who think differently; and consider their views in a larger context of planetary crisis and opportunity.
The intent of our learning journeys is not a change of worldview, but rather a change in the ways people relate to their worldviews – fostering qualities like reflexivity, curiosity, openness, connection, and deep listening.
Through reflective journaling, new knowledge, embodied experience, and meaningful exchange with others, these learning journeys invite perspective-shifts, supporting people to evolve their thinking, relating, and acting.
Our learning journeys are designed in collaboration with multiple universities and tested with students in diverse contexts. They are researched for educational impact and designed with the intention to scale – so they can be used by educators and trainers everywhere.
Engaging worldviews can empower people to
Explore & expand mindsets
Exploring worldviews supports individuals to grow psychologically, by helping them ‘take perspective on their perspective’. Instead of being identified with their worldview, they learn to look at it. This broadens their horizon and creates room for multiple perspectives. The result is an expanded mindset with more possibilities for thought, choice, and action.
Exchange & collaborate constructively
Exploring worldviews enhances social relationships, by enabling people to have more meaningful conversations. Through guided exchanges about their deeper views and values, people more easily find common ground, and learn to appreciate the wisdom of other perspectives. This supports constructive communication and creative collaboration.
Initiate creative & transformative change
Considering their worldviews in a larger, planetary context supports people to expand perspectives and explore what gives meaning to their life and world. Questioning dominant paradigms enables them to formulate their own visions and ideals, and find their contribution to the larger whole. Such deep clarity of purpose engenders creative and transformative action.
Our world in crisis: A crisis of worldviews
As our world is in crisis, awareness is growing that “nothing short of a wholesale shift of mindsets is needed”, as UNDP’s 2020 Human Development Report put it. Increasingly people recognize that the multitude of interrelated crises humanity faces should be seen as manifestation of a deeper crisis – a crisis in how we as human beings relate to ourselves, each other, nature, and the world around us. That is, a crisis of worldviews.
We can see this crisis come to expression in our planetary environmental issues; in our extreme political and cultural polarization; in the mental health crisis and the sense of meaninglessness pervading communities; in the socio-economic discrepancies that leave too many people unable to take care of their basic needs.
Worldviews refer to the overarching, collectively shared, ‘big stories’ through which humans make sense of their experience and world. As our worldviews define what is possible, valuable, and expected, they shape our lives and world to a great extent. In the words of cultural historian Richard Tarnas: “worldviews create worlds.”
Because our worldviews are often considered to be both root causes of humanity’s crisis, as well as the deep leverage points for addressing it, individually and collectively examining our worldviews offers potent pathways forward. Numerous voices therefore emphasize the need for more transformative forms of education.
Transformative learning invites ‘mind-shifts’
Transformative learning goes beyond adding information to our stores of knowledge (in-form-ation) and changes the form of our thinking itself (trans-form-ation). Such learning invites for perspective-shifts that allow one to see something in a qualitatively new way.
However, our Higher Education Institutions tend to focus on transmitting knowledge and cultivating cognitive skills, not on facilitating transformation. Though these institutions are educating the next generation of leaders, they’re generally not fostering the transformative change and leadership so urgently needed in today’s world.
Worldview Journeys is therefore developing, piloting, and researching a transformative curriculum that deeply engages worldviews, aimed at students in higher education, and beyond. Currently, this curriculum consists of:
- The Educational Worldview Journey (in collaboration with Utrecht University)
- The Deep Dive Into Your Worldview (in collaboration with Utrecht University, University of Technology Eindhoven, and Wageningen University and Research).
Our learning journeys
Are based in a transformative pedagogy, empowering people to enact transformative change;
Are structured into seven-step learning journeys, designed according to insights from the Sciences of Learning and Development;
Support whole-person learning, through reflective, experiential, and interactive practices;
Support inquiry-based and metacognitive learning, empowering people to formulate their own learning goals and questions, connect the new knowledge to their life and world, and leverage peer learning;
Are supported by our online platform and attractively designed travel journals;
Are designed to be scalable, enabling educators to easily facilitate these learning journeys;
Are science-based, i.e., developed and studied in an academic context.
Image by Noeske Kaesler.