The Regeneration Lab

Daniel Christian Wahl, an international thought leader in regenerative design and education, dives into the urgent need for a holistic approach to learning. He emphasizes the importance of integrating human patterns with bioregional contexts and advocates for transforming education from static problem-solving to adaptive participation. Wahl discusses the power of interdisciplinary knowledge, lifelong learning, and participatory worldviews. He encourages educators to promote experiential practices and deeply listening, ultimately calling for universities to become bioregional learning hubs.

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with dr. Domenico Dentoni, professor at Monpellier Business School, part of the University of Montpellier in Southern France.Domenico is fulll professor in business, transformation and resilience and specializes in using complexity-as-pedagogy with inductive approaches to teaching and research that has been highlighted for excellence by his students (while at Wageningen University) for years. In this chat we discuss the importance of scaffolding so that learners can engage with complexity that comes through his educational approach: placing the complexity of phenomena of everyday practices, of the mundane, and their relationship to systemic unsustainability as central in the teaching process.  In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  The importance of engaging with complexity in research, teaching and learning.  The power of curiosity and fascination with the world around me as a way of being in the world.  Balancing figuring things out for yourselves while providing support for your students to engage with it in a safe way.  The power of using inductive approaches to learning and teaching (placing real life cases before theories).   The importance of engaging with real life cases that learners can relate to and allowing learners to self-select knowledges and theories to engage with this case.  The importance of incorporating (meaningful) choice in the learning process.  Seeing learning akin to a design process of cycles of diverging and converging linked together with reflective practice.  The importance of making a purposive effort when working with real complexity cases that there is no right or wrong but different lenses and approaches that are more or less profound.  Finding a balance between the depth of analysis and effectiveness of identified interventions/solutions when working with higher education students.  Working with balanced teams (usually the most diverse teams possible – diversity of gender, experiences, disciplines).  External Links:  Dr. Domenico Dentoni - Montpellier Business School (montpellier-bs.com) Domenico Dentoni Domenico Dentoni | LinkedIn dr. D (Domenico) Dentoni - WUR 

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with Maria Garcia Alvarez, senior lecturer at the Global Project Management and Change Management at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences as well as a Earthcharter certified lecturer. She is a self-described educational rebel that works to transform education in line with life. Maria argues for the importance of helping learners to ask more, deeper and better questions in their quest to become change agents. In her education she leaves from a value-based approach to engaging with sustainability as education. She argues passionate for a re-association of our relationships with the rest of the natural world, sketching the role of an educator as facilitating the reconnecting with other forms of life and to learn to truly care and steward for the ecosystems of which we are part and expressions.  One of the ways she does this is by using the overview effect, showing the Earth in all of its beauty, grandeur and vulnerability of the little blue dot we call our home. In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  Seeing sustainability as a way of thinking and being as part of ecosystems. Start by challenging the worldviews of learners, the status-quo of their thinking, before working with transforming existing (eco)systems.  The importance of challenging what is normal, and what should be.  The power of realizing that the way we perceive and look at the world is socially constructed and can thus be reconstructured (much like the systems we have co-created over time).  The challenge and importance of reconnecting with ecosystems as educational institutions, including leveraging the strengths of (natural) ecological systems such as collaboration and regeneration.  The contradiction between the financial’s sectors impact on (higher) education and the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The difficulty of changing higher education at the institutional level and transgressing from the ivory tower to the entangled university of the future and the question whether it is possible to take the necessary steps to go through this transformation.  The need for deconstruction of the university and higher education so that a new version can be constructed that focusses on ecosystem learning.  Teachers can be key players in the transition towards a more sustainable future.  Systemic problems with hierarchial models in education that do not reward those that are practicing the change.  External Links Maria G. | LinkedIn María García Alvarez - Earth Charter Maria Garcia Alvarez | Social Innovation Lab About us | valuecreators (valuecreators-whc.com) Windesheim Honours College | International 

Hi! And welcome to The Regenerative Education Podcast, where sustainability transitions and higher education collide. My name is Bas van den Berg and I am the educational coordinator of the Mission Zero centre of expertise, where we find regenerative solutions for sustainable futures. In each episode, leading educators share their stories of how they are designing and enacting regenerative forms of education and the types of sustainability transformations that these forms of education are nurturing.  This podcast is part of my PhD in education and learning sciences as an external candidate at Wageningen University & Research. Where I explore how we can design and enact regenerative higher education. Higher education that nurtures the appropriate participation in the healing of places and self. The first micro-season of this podcast launches after the summer, on the 29th of August. The Regenerative Education Podcast will be available on all major streaming platforms.   You are warmly invited to join me on this journey as we chat with twenty-six teachers, professors, researchers and activists active in Western Europe. Join me as we discover how their innovations emerged, the futures they envision for them and the different challenges and barriers they face(d) trying to enact this. Do you want to collaborate or know more? Feel free to reach out through LinkedIn or check out my blog @Medium/Mission Impact.  I am excited to go on this journey with you. Let’s discover what a regenerative education could be like and how we can take on this awe-some response-ability. For now, happy holidays. RLE — Regenerative Learning Ecologies – MediumBas van den Berg | LinkedIn