Awareness-Based System Change for Elevating Education and Reshaping Development

Abstract

Much of the work that I do in the field of leadership capacity building for transformative systems change, is bridging the gap between the skills that our formal education system has equipped us with, and the skills that we actually need in order to shape our future into the results that we truly want. In this commentary, I expand on how Awareness-Based Systems Change can complement and transform our current formal education system. The “awareness-based” portion of this approach shines a light on a dimension very rarely explored in our schools and universities: the inner dimension of the observing self from which our thinking, being, and doing arise. The “systems change” portion highlights a broader and deeper understanding that befriends the complexity of how humanity has evolved through our societal institutions. This whole-human, whole-system perspective would complement the relatively narrower way of seeing the world that our formal education system tends to reinforce through logical reasoning and scientific inquiry skills alone. I argue that many traditional knowledge systems are as rich and rigorous as a western way of knowing, and that bringing these different ways of knowing into conversation with each other may help us to provoke deeper mindset shifts and rethink what it means to be “developed”. Lastly, I highlight the role of this Journal for creating the platform for more stories, examples, and learnings from around the world to make visible our collective body of work in societal renewal.