Online Colloquium No. 5: Scaffolding perspective awareness

Datum und Uhrzeit
Dauer
2 Stunden
Referent

Dr. Thomas Jordan

University of Gothenburg

Details

Scaffolding perspective awareness. How to support individuals, groups and organizations to develop awareness and skills in productively using multiple perspectives

In this Colloquium session Thomas Jordan describes “perspective awareness” as a critical skill needed for our societies to handle complex challenges skillfully. Examples of such challenges are integration of refugees, dealing with climate change, societal change regarding employment and technology and public health. Perspective awareness is a more descriptive term for what many in integral circles know as “visionlogic” (Ken Wilber). With more perspective awareness, we might have less of unproductive debating among polarized perspectives, and more creative use of tensions between perspectives in order to inform strategy development for significant societal and organizational issues. Thomas will outline a number of different concepts, frameworks and pedagogical formats that may be useful in scaffolding the development of awareness of and skill in using contrasting properties of different types of perspectives, and invite participants to talk about further possibilities in developing powerful forms of scaffolding this key skill.

Shortbio

Thomas Jordan, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Gothenburg university, focusing on conflict management, methods for managing complex issues and consciousness development. He is currently leading a research project on theories of change in local initiatives to facilitate the integration of refugees and other immigrants in Swedish suburbs. He divides his time between research, teaching and supervising at the university, leading workshops and coaching in his own consulting firm, specializing in training in professional conflict management. He has been one of the associate editors of Integral Review since 2005. He has published a large number of articles and reports, as well as two textbooks on conflict management (in Swedish).