The 21st-Century Empowering Wholeness Adaptive (EWA) Educational Model Transforming Learning Capacity and Human Capital through Wholeness Systems Thinking towards a Sustainable Future

David Holman () and Eva Švejdarová
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David Holman: Department of Production, Logistics and Quality Management, ŠKODA AUTO University, Na Karmeli 1457, 293 01 Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic
Eva Švejdarová: Department of Human Resource Management, ŠKODA AUTO University, Na Karmeli 1457, 293 01 Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-35

Abstract: To meet the sustainability challenges in the 21st century, students need to develop a unique human learning capacity for creativity, responsibility, adaptation, meaningfulness, and lifelong learning. Furthermore, current changes in the societal environment have given rise to the need for a new learning strategy that guides learners in perceiving reality as an interrelated purposeful system with meaningful limits rather than collections of facts or systems without limits, as done so far. This paper aims to verify its hypothesis and introduce the 21st-century Empowering Wholeness Adaptive learning model (21st EWA Edu). This is a unique learning strategy that enables a meaningful transformation of learning capacity and creates a unifying learning system of dynamic content, didactics, knowledge, skills, competencies, understanding, values, and behaviors. Over three years, data from three cohorts of students at the School of Business Administration were collected. To assess the impact of the 21st EWA learning approach, both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis were employed. The results suggest that the proposed model creates a learning system enabling the transformation of learning capacity while empowering students to become conscious and engaged lifelong learners, which is much needed for a truly sustainable future.

Keywords: systems thinking; education for sustainable development; transformative learning; key competencies in sustainability; critical pedagogy; understanding of wholeness; learning capacity; project-based learning; team-based learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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