Charter of Aspirations Discussion Board

We invite you to comment on this Charter now.

Pick two of the aspirations in the list, and let us know what resonates with you, or what stands in dissonance.

Also let us know what is missing and what you would like to add.

As a reminder, here are our aspirations below:

• Inclusive participation and involvement, providing a platform to share a wide variety of experiences and insights on care-full scholarship and many related topics.
• Mutuality and playful cross-pollination, to inspire and support each other in our different endeavours. To this end, in each unit we propose a variety of methods, approaches, and exercises for learners to try, either alone or together – drawing also from the arts, design and system thinking, etc., and welcome everyone to share theirs.
• Embodied experience, addressing not only our rational side, but also our bodies and emotions, through experiential and transgressive learning approaches, and through open discussions and critical thinking sessions. This is grounded in the awareness of the importance of engaging all dimensions in processes of learning, as well as the recognition that we are all humans – even more so than professionals – and thus we are all vulnerable, entitled to a variety of needs.
• Deep sustainability, thinking in eco-logical terms, and thus proposing activities that not only respect the environment, but also that we uphold alternative, less anthropocentric (human-centred) visions, aiming for more-than-human flourishing and symbiotic / synergic relations.
• Complexity, trying to avoid banalisations or simplifications, engaging with issues critically and openly, and welcoming “dis/oriented voices as well as voices searching for new orientations” (Rogowska-Stangret 2021: 16).
• Flexibility, adaptiveness, and evolution, framing this MOOC as an open-ended experiment, in the hope that following editions will be greatly informed by learners’ contributions and feedback to this first edition.
• Kindness, respect, deep listening and open dialogue, in our community forums, in the coaching sessions we will propose, and in all the MOOC virtual venues.
• Reflexivity, in practicing self-awareness, both when embracing one’s own truth and normativity, and when building constructive dialogue with others. Our hope is to welcome people from all backgrounds and disciplines, without imposing one paradigm or the other.
• Self-care, in prompting discussions, sharing experiences, and proposing exercises that are meant to nurture our well-being and safety.
• Reciprocity, in sharing resources, insights, and tools, and inviting members of this learning community to do the same on the common platforms, so that we can all benefit and grow together.
• And last but not least, implicit in many of the aspirations spelled out earlier, our biggest aspiration is that this can be care-full space, as caring is “conditio sine qua non of any engagement in life, theorizing, teaching, researching, questioning, making connections responding, creating boundaries and so on” (Rogowska-Stangret 2021: 20).

For this exercise, please add your response to the common discussion board via the files tab at the top of this lesson page.