A Compassionate Systems Leadership Retreat

Reflections on a learning journey

After two years in lockdown, participating in a compassionate systems leadership retreat in June 2022, hosted by the Woodleigh Institute, was a restorative learning journey.

While most participants were school leaders, I brought a different perspective, that of an interdisciplinary designer working on learning design and social innovation projects. It was a privilege to be among so many dedicated and compassionate education leaders, stewarding school systems and facilitating compassionate education.

The defining facets of this experience to me were the place, people, and process:

The place: the Woodleigh Institute, home of the Compassionate Systems Collective, is situated in a beautiful old farmhouse that has been renewed into a place of learning. A warm, caring, and creative atmosphere resonates through the grounds. If gardening is a metaphor for education, and a teacher’s role is to tend the soil (as said by a Woodleigh teacher: James Clapham) — the team at the Woodleigh Institute did a wonderful job tending the soil for the learning to unfold.

The Woodleigh Institute

The people: the hosts and participants were generous and humble: facilitating the space for a generative social field to emerge. And beyond the immediate space, there was an awareness that this group was part of a growing global community of compassionate systems practitioners around the world — with the founding elders supporting the practice with tools and research. This awareness of a global community added to the depth and potential of the space.

Reporting back

The process: over three days we connected with ourselves, each other, the practices, tools, and ideas of the compassionate systems learning framework, and the Mandala for Systems Change (Centre for Systems Awareness, 2019). I will share three insights:

Firstly: that learning design within a compassionate systems lens expands beyond only pedagogy, to also include designing for learning culture, physical spaces, and systems. The Mandala for Systems Change and the iceberg allowed us to practice how you can approach learning design in this frame.

Secondly: that seeing a learning organisation or environment as a living, social system, is a powerful lens to understand the practice of facilitating generative fields of learning. The learning is multi-directional, relational, emergent, and more than the sum of one individual: a notion congruent with social learning. And beyond this perspective about the form of education (a social system), we can also ask: what are the substantive values and ideas that comprise the wider society and social systems that inform social learning? What type of learning can think creatively and reflexively about our social system? 
 
Thirdly: how we show up affects the social field. We know this much from research on teacher expectations (Johnston, Wildly and Shand, 2019). However, this retreat allowed us to not just absorb this knowledge, but engage in reflective practice about our attitude, intentions, and goals. The practice of clarifying, articulating, and sharing your intentions and reflections helps critical reflection on your thoughts and actions, goals, and practice. 

The Mandala for Systems Change - Centre for Systems Awareness

As I integrate the learning from this retreat into my practice, some questions I am currently working with:

• How can we build on the Core Leadership Capabilities (source) to include systems design? As an interdisciplinary designer, I see the field of systemic design growing and so there is room for further research and practice in this area (Jones, 2014). 

• If education systems are part of the current economic paradigm that is a state of accelerating change, how can we use these tools to anticipate learning needed for healthy social and ecological futures? 

Kim Shore

Strategic Designer

https://www.kimshore.com.au  

References:
 
Barbero, S, Battistoni. (2017). Systemic Design, from the content to the structure of education: new educational model, The Design Journal, vol. 20, no. 1, pp 336-1354
 
Center for Systems Awareness, 2019, https://systemsawareness.org/about/#mandala-for-systems-change, accessed 1 July 2022  
 
Johnston O, Wildy H, Shand J. 2019. A decade of teacher expectations research 2008–2018: Historical foundations, new developments, and future pathways. Australian Journal of Education. 2019; 63(1): 44-73. doi:10.1177/0004944118824420

Jones, P. H. (2014). Systemic Design Principles for Complex Social Systems, in G. S. Metcalf (Ed.), Social Systems and Design, Spring: Japan, pp. 91–128.
 
Senge, Peter M 1990, The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday/Currency.