Category Archives: June 2019

06/29 – Transdisciplinary Curriculum: Educational Philosophy and Rationale

June 2019 / Feature Articles

Sue L. T. McGregor

Higher education is one of the most important arenas in which the transdisciplinary (TD) approach should be applied (Güvenen, 2016). Fortunately, educational institutions are “evolving [so they can] answer the demand for transdisciplinary skills” (Güvenen, 2016, p. 75). In concert, “educators are recognizing the vital significance of designing a transdisciplinary curriculum” (Smyth, 2017, p. 64). Indeed, it is a growing phenomenon in higher education as evidenced by several recent initiatives (see Albright, 2016; Babadi, Varaki, Khandaghi, …

06/29 – More Statesmanship, Less Leadership Please!

June 2019 / Feature Articles

Edward Kelly

According to this model of adult development, less than 10% of our leaders have the developmental capacity to match the complexity of the issues they face, and that includes President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May. This mismatch, which gets resolved at the next stage in our or their development, looks more like statesmanship than leadership.

How much better off would we be to have statesmanship as our model of good leadership, rather than the more conventional, …

06/29 – Limitations of Frankfurt School Hauptseminars From a Perspective of the Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF)

June 2019 / Feature Articles

Otto Laske

While resurgent interest in the writings of the Frankfurt School, especially Adorno, is over-focused on the ideological content of his writings, a much more relevant aspect of Adorno’s work is that of a teacher of ‘deep’, or dialectical, thinking. Adorno’s ‘Negative Dialektik’ spells out his teaching only in a form once-removed, rather than giving an experience of his and Horkheimer’s practice in real time. This practice found its focus in what an admirer of Adorno and himself a …

06/29 – Up! (Ten Years After . . .) – Building Community-Based Equity

June 2019 / Notes from the Field

Brian McConnell

This segment of Notes from the Field reflects the shared experience of a small band of reflective practitioners originating in Roanoke, Virginia and interfacing with each other as participants, along with some 300 other such teams from around the world, in the Presencing Institute’s recently launched, “Societal Transformation Lab”. Drawing from a set of theoretical frameworks sharing parallels related to “consciousness” which include Integral, Theory U, the Systems View, and Spiral Dynamics; “Showing …

06/29 – Gandhi’s Integral Leadership to Greatness for All (Sarvodaya): With Truth (Satya), Nonviolence (Ahimsa), and Self-Rule (Swaraj)

June 2019 / Feature Articles

Ray Gehani

Many prominent leaders and major media have almost unanimously acknowledged Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869 – 1948) as one of the 20th Century’s greatest leaders for humankind (Time, 1999).  Gandhi is also recognized as a firm believer and practitioner of truth and nonviolence with high integrity.  Albert Einstein noted, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this, ever in flesh and blood, walked upon the earth.”  His message of truth-based persuasion (…

06/29 – Transnational Considerations in Equity Work in Three Contexts: Higher Education, Philanthropy and Public Policy

June 2019 / Feature Articles

Cristina Alcalde, M. Gabriela Alcalde and Gonzalo Alcalde

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s 2019 and racial equity is increasingly put forth as a promising framework for understanding and undoing centuries of racist and colonialist power structures. The framework of equity is both an important and urgent one to consider, given that a convergence of demographic, environmental, political and economic trends emphasizes the need to at least consider the strong possibility that inequities may be significantly contributing to our …

06/29 – A Mindful Society (symposium), 24-27 May, 2019, Toronto Canada

June 2019 / Notes from the Field

Blake Poland

A Mindful Society (amindfulsociety.org) is an annual forum for those interested and/or active in taking mindfulness practice ‘off the cushion’ and into all sectors of society. In addition to pre- and post-conference workshops, led this year by Dr Dan Seigel and Thupten Jinpa (the Dalai Lama’s personal translator) respectively, over 500 delegates were treated to two days of plenary concurrent sessions include practice sessions, presentations from leaders bringing mindfulness into health care, education, prisons, law enforcement and other …

06/29 – Leading Beyond the Ego

June 2019 / Book Reviews

Annabel Beerel

John Knights, President of the U.K based leadership development and coaching organization, LeaderShape Global, along with several members of his team, advocate a new leadership approach for the twenty-first century called Transpersonal Leadership. The steps to becoming a transpersonal leader, are explained in great detail in their cutting-edge book, Leading Beyond the Ego.

According to Knights, et al., traditional leadership behaviors are not working. Based on research dating back to 2005, and involving several thousand executives, Knights found …

06/29 – Toward a Technology Infrastructure for the Second Tier

June 2019 / Feature Articles

Don Dulchinos

Integral thinkers Don Beck and Ken Wilber have both cited Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere as a model or metaphor for the Turquoise stage of human development.  Teilhard spoke of “a harmonised collectivity of consciousnesses equivalent to a sort of super-consciousness.” [1] I published a book entitled Neurosphere (after noosphere), in 2005, the same year I completed Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics training.[2] In some ways, I think I would have written a different book had I …

06/29 – The Desire for Mutual Recognition: Social Movements and the Dissolution of the False Self

June 2019 / Book Reviews

Barbara Nussbaum

This book has already been singled out by its academic publisher, Routledge, nominating it for the best nonfiction book in 2018. But for me the compelling reason for a broader audience to read it, is the artful way it embodies its own timely message for humanity. Peter Gabel makes a compelling case for movements which catalyse whole system transformation and uses various lenses through which we humans perceive, think, feel and learn to claim our own agency in …