LET'S BE CHANGEMAKERS
  • SIX WAYS TO CELEBRATE EXPERIENCE
    • Tacit Knowledge
    • Resilience & Well-being
    • Experimental Creativity
    • Even-mindedness
    • Intimations of Wisdom
    • Eulogy Virtues
    • An Historic Opportunity
    • Clint's Origin Story
    • Our Theory of Change
    • The Three Planning Tasks
    • Three Approaches to Change
  • WHO WE ARE
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THREE APPROACHES (PLUS ONE) TO CHANGEMAKING
In studying social entrepreneurs from a variety of sectors and cultures as an associate with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford and from my own experience as an educator, I have concluded that changemakers approach improving the world in three ways plus one: directly, indirectly, through groups and any combination of them.  Here are some stories from the world of education.  

The Direct Approach
focuses on the students themselves, especially on improving their attitudes, their values and their habits. This is work of a new generation of social psychologists who have developed a number of innovative "social psychological interventions in education" --  well designed and short (15 -30 minute) lessons that leverage various forms of individual and systemic energy to improve academic performance.  A number of these social psychologists are now delivering these "interventions" virtually -- the most popular on "the growth mindset" -- for middle, high school and college students. 
  • Carol Dweck and a Metaphor to Live By.  
  • JB Schramm and Writing Your Way to College.  

The Group Approach involves turning negative peer pressure into positive peer pressure. One example is in reducing bullying through teamwork.  Another example is through study groups, which can also be extraordinarily powerful in improving academic performance.  Kurt Lewin, the founding father of social psychology said it best, “Group dynamics can be the biggest barriers and the biggest motivators for change.”   
  • Nicholas Carlisle and No Bully: the Power of Positive Peer Pressure. 
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The Indirect Approach focuses on transforming undervalued and often-overlooked organizational, institutional or "environmental" resources within a school into something more healthy and positive.
  • Jill Vialet and the Under-Supervised Playground.
​
Combined Approaches. 
Effective changemaking often involves a combination of approaches.  A direct approach such as introducing the powerful metaphor that the mind is a muscle, for example, can be augmented through group-work and such "environmental" or "situational" factors (for example, class size or the use of time itself -- events that repeat themselves over the course of the school year.)  One of the most powerful examples of such a combined approach is Mary Gordon’s baby-in-the-classroom project.  
SIX WAYS TO CELEBRATE EXPERIENCE
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  • SIX WAYS TO CELEBRATE EXPERIENCE
    • Tacit Knowledge
    • Resilience & Well-being
    • Experimental Creativity
    • Even-mindedness
    • Intimations of Wisdom
    • Eulogy Virtues
    • An Historic Opportunity
    • Clint's Origin Story
    • Our Theory of Change
    • The Three Planning Tasks
    • Three Approaches to Change
  • WHO WE ARE
  • Our Shop