Articles

Rethinking Colleges and Universities

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

  What is happening in post-secondary education is quite remarkable and is creating the conditions for change. Here is a quick summary of some of the things our observatory is tracking, with a focus on Ontario: Changing student demography & demand for flexibility – Shifts in the demography of the student body in Ontario – […]

created: Thursday February 27th, 2014

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Taking an Innovation Journey

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

Innovation is critical for us all. To support a planet with between 9 and 10 billion people, we need innovation in our food supply, water and energy systems and in our systems for health care, social support and education.  Innovation should be a major focus for governments, universities and colleges, business and community. Yet innovation […]

created: Wednesday February 26th, 2014

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A History of the Future

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

In 2011, Max Singer, founding President of the Hudson Institute and a leading practitioner of strategic foresight, published a book called History of the Future.  The premise of the book is very simple – the shape of the world to come is visible today, though there are a few areas of uncertainty (demographics and the future of […]

created: Monday February 24th, 2014

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Wisdom Actions – Coping with Crisis

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

  Following from the post on wisdom and leadership (here), we have been reviewing the work on what wise leaders do when faced with challenge, threat or a significant issue. Again we lean heavily on published research on wisdom and coping and on resilience – things I have written about in other contexts (see, for […]

created: Sunday February 23rd, 2014

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The Work of Wisdom and Leadership

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

  We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, and effort which no one can spare us.   Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time Vol. II: Within a Budding Grove, 1919) What is wisdom and what has […]

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UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY CHALLENGES

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

The European Union is slowly backing away from its commitment to climate change policies which would place emissions reduction and environmental policy at the heard of economic policies. Rather than pursuing growth at any costs and industrial development using fossil fuels, the EU was committed to a future economy which was less dependent of fossil […]

created: Friday February 21st, 2014

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Transforming Education – What are The Routes to Change?

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

“Transforming education” is part of a lexicon of education systems around the world. But what kind of “transformation” are we looking at? One route is to strengthen the role of the professional in designing, shaping and leading education systems at the level of school, school districts and systems. The idea is to equip teachers and […]

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Changing the Way We Think About the Future

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

The future is not a straight line from the past. It has bends, turns and may even involve a “sink hole”. What we thought was going to be shifts – the average global surface temperature is not what it was predicted to be, the sun is not behaving as we thought it might, the economic recovery […]

created: Wednesday February 19th, 2014

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Education – A Contest of Ideologies

By Stephen Murgatroyd -

Public education is a disputed area of public policy. There are growing concerns, fuelled by evidence of the performance of students by jurisdiction on international standardized tests, that students are not performing as well as they could and that the design of our education system is not “fit for purpose” in the twenty first century. […]

created: Tuesday February 18th, 2014

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