Critical Learnership: A New Perspective on Learning

Abstract

Abstract. To keep abreast of technological innovations, social change, and advances in subject matter knowledge, professional practitioners must continually learn. To solve new and different problems and capitalise on emerging opportunities that arise in practice requires learning. Tendencies to learn and solve problems on one's own are limiting and unsustainable. Thus, more collaborative, extensible, and sustainable approaches to learning and change are necessary. To this end, the authors present an emerging perspective on sustainable and collaborative learning, innovation, and transformation-Critical Learnership. Critical Learnership involves shared and continuous critique and challenge of existing ways of thinking, doing, and being, while building autonomy and self-direction. It draws on theories and principles of adult learning and professional development, sustainability and ecology, adaptive systems, organisational learning, and selfdetermination. At its essence, Critical Learnership is a critical, active mindset towards finding sustainable solutions to everyday problems. The skills and strategies of Critical Learnership are necessary for and help to achieve lifelong and life-wide learning. The article lays out the need for a new direction in the way we attempt to understand and encourage learning, describes how Critical Learnership may enable us to venture down this path, and discusses its implications for individuals, organisations, and society as a whole.

Sustainable learning and education: A curriculum for the future

“…An empowering education builds agency, autonomy and self-direction (Brockbank and McGill 2007;Myers and Beringer 2010). It comprises learning for the future, not merely the present (Hays and Reinders 2018;Howard 2018).…”

“…Such purposeful, ongoing and progressive learning is of vital importance to individuals, teams, organisations and communities. Indeed, it can be argued that relentless learning is essential for global well-being, and is necessary to combat the greatest problems of our time (Hays and Reinders 2018).…”

“…Sustainable learning and education: A curriculum for the future in terms of "learning to learn" (Stringher 2014). It also involves unlearning (Pedler and Hsu 2014), and focuses on critical reflective action (Hays and Reinders 2018) and "environmental scanning" (Gardiner and Rieckmann 2015). 1 Compared to lifelong learning, sustainable learning is distinguished by conscious and intentional learning in the moment 2 (Hays 2017) amid an ongoing flow of circumstances and emerging possibilities.…”

Emergent in Strategic Management, Theories, and Strategic Leadership: Implications of Absorptive, Adaptive, and Managerial Manifold Wisdom

“…The strategic leadership adaptive capacity among the strategic management team iterates firm strategic planning, proactively defends, and reacts promptly to heterogeneous market dynamics (Ghorban & Gholipour, 2018;Lam et al, 2018;Bell et al, 2018). Strategic leaders' adaptive competency posited that dynamic behavior, cognitive and social intricacy, a growing mind-set, and recognition of the relevance of circumstances must come to bear in fostering effective strategic management performance (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018; Hays & Reinders, 2018;Evgenevna, 2021).…”