The School for Transformative Leadership (STL) is the first initiative of its kind in Central Europe, which is innovating the existing university curricula with the latest findings within the spheres of leadership, ethics, personal development and professional growth. The project engages seven of the eight faculties of its host university, Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, and involves 150 academics and practitioners from various academic institutions and businesses in the Czech Republic, Europe, the US and other parts of the world, which reflects its interdisciplinary and international character. The project will link the best leadership practices worldwide with the insights from the disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, political science, psychology, physiology and other natural and social sciences as well as humanities. The School for Transformative Leadership will be implemented by a special unit within the Philosophical Faculty of Palacky University – the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, which will secure the lasting impact of the project.
The School for Transformative Leadership was conceived as a response to the shortcomings in the current system of higher education. The experience of the project team has shown that its main problems can be categorized into three groups:
The teaching of leadership has been limited both in content and methods. In most universities leadership training is focused on maximizing income (traditional MBA and executive training) or acquiring and executing power (diplomatic academies). This approach has shown its inability to foster sustainable societal transformation. Cutting-edge research tells us that the best method to develop leadership for sustainable development is to focus on cultivating personal characteristics (e.g. social intelligence, ethical values, responsibility, empathy etc.). Nevertheless, such research and its practical implementation remain outside of mainstream leadership teaching. STL is aimed to fill this lacuna.
The second issue is the lack of practical skills training in modern academia. While one can find useful theoretical research in leadership training and personal development, there are virtually no university curricula which integrate research insights into practice-oriented training programs. STL will be the first initiative in Czech Republic, which transfers the knowledge and experience from the sphere of leadership into teaching at the university level.
Resulting from the first two areas is the minimalistic, cynical and utilitarian approach to education and learning. The central trends in modern academia are:
Transfer information and thinking patterns down to students rather than develop their creativity, individuality and will;
Homogenize learning process by spreading identical curricula, programs and ideas (e.g. Bologna process). All that makes students perceive education as a plank in a carrier ladder. The activities of STL will restore the ancient ideal of education as the love of wisdom, which enriches students’ personalities rather than improves their position of power or financial well-being.
STL is an interdisciplinary project launched in September 2009, which is currently being implemented at Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. It is a higher education initiative, which integrates research, teaching and practical activity all aimed at transforming the way the university education is functioning. The vision behind the STL is to implement a six-level university model, which would expand the added value of the university from the mere problem analysis (level 1), which it is currently doing. A six-level university model looks as follows:
Most universities focus on level 1 education, which involves analyzing problems using theories and empirical data. This is a worthwhile endeavor, but there are other levels of education that are currently neglected.
At level 2 prediction is introduced into the academia. The ability to forecast future events is one of the main goals of science, yet it is absent in most educational curricula. The traditional university looks to the past, not to the future.
Level 3 deals with generating solutions, which involves reflecting upon individual choices, policy options, new business models, etc. So far, universities have generated far more knowledge about problems than about solutions. There is a rather widespread reluctance among scientists to engage in normative research and to make proposals, because proposals can be more easily attacked than empirical studies, which are based on “hard data”. However, the academics should be encouraged to prove their prowess in comparing different options in a systematic manner, and producing thoughtful proposals for viable solutions.
Level 4 has to do with skills development for solution implementation. Already today some universities invest in Level 4 education. In these universities students learn transferrable skills such as project management, fundraising, team building, negotiation, conflict resolution, and so on. Skills components can be integrated in all academic curricula and they should be taught in an ethically sensitive way.
Level 5 education has to do with personal development, character building and behavior change. This is rather difficult to teach, because there are no easy ways to transform deeply ingrained beliefs and behaviors. The main requirement is that the change must be wanted, not imposed.
As education and self-development are never-ending and personal processes, we believe that the essence and goals of the pinnacle level of higher education, level 6, should remain open and be resolved on an individual level. This can be the large-scale societal change, a shift in consciousness towards the realization of higher meanings and truths, personal metaphysical enlightenment etc. In order to implement the vision of a six-level university, STL will adopt the traditional methods, formats and information as well as experiment with the new ones. The project activities range from curricula innovation, namely preparing 56 new academic courses and 120 seminars and innovating the existing 7 courses with leadership-related modules, to introducing a novel teaching framework – the so-called Meisterkurse – involving wise and accomplished people from within and outside academia sharing their experience through innovative teaching practices, e.g. experiential learning or Socratic dialogues
The global objective of STL is to foster change in teaching and practice of leadership from its perception as a means to achieve financial success, gain power and influence towards a broader understanding of leadership as personal and professional growth, inalienable from the development of ethical values. Its immediate objectives in research and education are:
Develop a holistic model, which will overcome knowledge fragmentation, reductionism and excessive specialization of modern-day education system;
Revive the original essence of knowledge as the love of wisdom by introducing a Six-level Education Framework, which expands the vision of university education.
The concrete results of the project will include: - the creation of 56 new academic courses and 120 seminars and innovating the existing 7 courses with leadership-related modules; - the creation of 16 new skills courses and 180 seminars as well as innovation of 8 existing skills courses; - the creation of 48 new seminars for doctoral students organized into 4 thematic blocks:
research methods;
academic writing;
teaching skills; and
publication activity; - the creation of 9 new course and 108 new seminars within the innovative framework of Mesiterkurse (“the education of educators”).
The activity will involve wise and accomplished people from within and outside academia sharing their experience through innovative teaching practices, e.g. experiential learning or Socratic dialogues; - the creation of two publications devoted to the issues of leadership and personal development from the interdisciplinary point of view. The publications will summarize the knowledge and experience of the project and serve as teaching materials for both Czech and international students; - hosting 2 academic conferences aimed at summarizing the vision and crystallizing the roadmap for the creation of a new higher education system able to secure sustainable development on personal, group and societal levels
The project creates innovations on three levels:
Vision of the role and goals of the university. The unique vision of STL is reflected in the concept of a Six-level University (see "Purpose and Specific Objectives" section);
Interdisciplinarity in teaching and research. STL is the first initiative of its kind in Central Europe, which implements a holistic approach, links departments and scholars as well as professionals from various backgrounds in order to innovate curricula in 15 academic fields;
New forms of teaching. The project will experiment with innovative teaching formats, such as experiential learning (skills courses) and so-called Meisterkurse format (teaching of teachers).
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