Creating new pathways for change
Our research doesn’t just study transformation — it designs and tests the conditions for it. We develop new frameworks, methods, and tools for addressing worldviews as deep leverage points for cultural and systemic change, and we study their impacts rigorously. Everything we offer in practice is grounded in this body of academic work.
Four Key innovations
The Worldview Test
An empirically validated measurement instrument that distinguishes four major worldviews — traditional, modern, postmodern, and integrative — grounded in over a decade of academic research. In our study we found that these worldviews are significantly related to climate behaviours and political priorities.
Nearly 100,000 people from over 200 countries have taken the test. It is used in education, research, and organisational settings.
Take the Worldview Test →
Stream of Consciousness (SoC) Dialogue
A simple but remarkably potent dialogue method that uses timed speaking turns, alternating roles, and carefully crafted prompts to move people into deeper layers of exploration and sharing. The practice reliably fosters trust, connection, and perspective shifts — even across significant worldview differences.
We have used this method for nearly two decades across diverse contexts — from university seminars and public forums to organisational sessions and transformative learning programmes — and have studied its impacts. Our research shows that the practice fosters more generative conversations while supporting the development of important democratic capabilities such as self-reflection, listening, and perspective-taking.
Participate in a dialogue session →
The Human Democratic Capabilities Meta-Map
What capabilities do people need to navigate complexity, hold difference, and act wisely in a time of existential planetary challenges? This conceptual framework proposes a fourfold map of Human Democratic Capabilities, organised around our relations to Self, Others, the Whole, and the Future — each culminating in a capstone capability: Self-leadership, Collaboration, Moral compass, and Purpose.
The framework is grounded in an integrative review across three paradigmatic educational approaches (reformist, critical, and transformative), using a worldview lens to surface their strengths and limitations. It offers a visionary guidepost for educational design and inquiry — and directly informs the structure of our Worldview Journey program and its four phases (Explore, Exchange, Expand, Express).
Explore the HDC Meta-Map →
The Worldview Journey
A research-based, transformative learning program developed through educational design research in collaboration with Utrecht University. The Worldview Journey guides participants through four developmental shifts — from unconscious to reflexive (Explore), from threat response to learning stance (Exchange), from separation to interconnection (Expand), and from values-action gap to aligned living (Express).
The program has been tested with thousands of participants across diverse contexts and consistently produces significant learning outcomes, including enhanced self-reflection, perspective-taking, listening, and a sense of connection and purpose. It uses a transformative learning cycle developed in our first study on this.
Experience the Worldview Journey →
Current and upcoming projects
Breaking Through Polarisation
Can generative dialogue work where polarisation and division are greatest? This new project explores whether the SoC dialogue practice can help stitch fractured worlds back together — supporting groups to collectively arrive at emerging new narratives and more integrative perspectives on our most divisive issues. We are currently seeking funding for this project.
Worldview Journey for Climate Transitions
This project brings worldview exploration to the heart of sustainability transformation — applying our approach in a domain where worldview clashes are among the most consequential. In development; funding being sought.
Toward a Eudaimonic Theory of Cultural Change
A conceptual paper developing a new theory of how worldviews transform — to be presented at the International Sustainability Transitions Conference (IST 2026) in Zurich, where our director is co-convening Track 12: Navigating the Meta Level: Worldviews, Sensemaking, and Cultural Evolution in Sustainability Transitions.
Publications
A selection of our most relevant peer-reviewed publications:
- De Witt, A. et al. (2024). Designing transformative interventions for a world in crisis. Environmental Science & Policy.
- De Witt, A. et al. (2023). The Seven-Step Learning Journey. Journal of Transformative Education.
- De Witt, A. et al. (2016). A new tool to map the major worldviews in the Netherlands and USA. Environmental Science & Policy.
- De Witt, A. (under review). Facilitating Generative Dialogue. Pre-print on SSRN.
- De Witt, A. (under review). Designing an Education of the Future. Pre-print on SSRN.
Full publication list: ORCID profile