Vandaag het gesprek met Maria Garcia Alvarez.

Maria works as a lecturer for the program Global Project and Change Management at the Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. This program is fully integrating Education for Sustainable Development and the Inner Development Goals in its curriculum. Here she teaches about Global Challenges, Globalisation, and Geopolitics.

She also coordinates the educational concept Value Creators, awarded by the Dutch Ministry of Education with the Higher Education Award 2021 (Hogeronderwijspremie).

She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Dutch Comenius Network, a network of teachers and educators for innovative education. She is also a member of different international networks such as the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (led by Professor Jeffry Sachs), Earth Charter International, UN Habitat, UNAI (UN Academic Impact), the Inner Development Goals Initiative, and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll).

As a researcher, she focuses on how universities can design innovative learning spaces which integrate the third level of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): Education AS Sustainable Development.

She has authored different chapters around this topic for the first SDG Global Encyclopaedia published by Springer. She defends that there is no transition without transformation when talking about sustainability and that education should be leading the Imagination Age.

Enjoy the insights of Maria.

Let’s get started…

In this conversation with Maria I learned:

Explore what we have with the lens of the Inner Development Goals

The skills of the IDG's are not new, but the language is very easy to understand.

The IDG's are the capabilities that students need in order to get there.

The world we have constructed is structurally not working. We deserve a better world structure that supports the planet.

The journey to a better world structure starts inside.

Language is a cultural manifestation of how we have constructed our own world.

We have a huge divide within ourselves.

We almost know nothing about ourselves.

We need more conversations on how we are feeling.

The IDG's give us the potential to explore.

Inner development is the door to a more open society where we can live like pirates, without rules.

Good questions are more important than good answers.

A university should be the place where you come with questions, and where you leave with more and better questions.

I-m-possible (I am possible)

A community of learning, where you as a teacher also learn from the students.

Social media and technology have an influence on how we measure IQ now.

First, connect with your students, and provide and environment where the student is in the driving seat.

Rethink the way we think about education.

Intelligence is going to change.

We have created a society that doesn't value work. It values prestige, the elite, and a title.

4E model: explore, engage, elaborate, and evaluate

Learn how to dance with the system.

Stop using the word stakeholders - let's use human actors and non-human actors.

Meer over Maria Garcia Alvarez:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-g-b641b7b/ 

https://www.windesheim.com/about-windesheim/windesheim-honours-college

 https://www.valuecreators-whc.com/

Other resources:

We don't need a better world, we need to be better for our world - Maria Grazia Testa

Theory U - Otto Scharmer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMJefS7s3lc

Spiral Dynamics Integral Theory

Ons feilbare denken #boekencast afl 10 - Daniel Kahneman

The Dawn of Everything (Het begin van alles #boekencast afl 63) - David Graeber and David Wengrow

Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber

Kaospilot

Nora Bateson - Warm data lab

4E model for change - Valuecreators

Theory U (Wikipedia)

Design Thinking (Wikipedia)