Changemaking and social innovation in teaching
Changemaking and socially innovative teaching are aimed at helping students gain the knowledge, skills and mindsets that will allow them to create positive change in their communities. The cornerstones of changemaking include the following pillars: conscious empathy, collaborative teamwork, shared leadership, and practising changemaking.
Changemaking in teaching and learning
Changemaking and socially innovative teaching are aimed at helping students gain the knowledge, skills and mindsets that will allow them to create positive change in their communities. In order to determine how to make change, students first need to be equipped to identify where problems exist and determine where inequities and injustices lie.
Given that students surveyed in 2010 had declined in their ability to empathize by an estimated 40 per cent from their counterparts 20 to 30 years previously (Konrath, 2010), something needs to change. The cornerstones of changemaking include the following pillars:
- Conscious empathy
- Collaborative teamwork
- Shared leadership
- Practising changemaking
For more information on how you can embed changemaking, social innovation or social entrepreneurship into your courses, check out the links and the content available in our Changemaking and Social Innovation Microsoft Teams channel.
For pedagogy support and ideas, contact Tracy Mitchell-Ashley. For a list of campus activities and changemaking tools you might engage with, you can reach out to the Centre for Changemaking an Social Innovation.
#ChangeTheNow
With #ChangeTheNow, we believe small acts can lead to big change and grassroots efforts can turn into large scale movements. We believe that together, students’, educators’ and communities’ ideas can spark innovations that make our region greener, healthier, safer, stronger and more inclusive! Will you join us in creating the positive change we need to see?
#ChangeTheNow is a social movement based on the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals that faculty can integrate as a teaching and learning activity, assignment or large project.
Join the community!
The Changemaking/Social Innovation Community of Practice Microsoft Teams channel is focused on exploring ways to embed and scale changemaking and social innovation in our classes and across our institution in order to support students as they acquire skills, attitudes and mindsets suited to the 21st century including empathy, resilience, teamwork and collaboration, systems thinking, new forms of leadership and a global mindset. Through the Microsoft Teams channel, we hope to create and curate resources to and share best practices for incorporating more effective outcomes into our courses. We will work to discover alternative assignments that will engage our students and see how the language of changemaking can relate to our classes.
