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Transition Makers Toolbox

openexplicit IDG relationpractice-based51 unique activities (54 pages; 3 published under two skills), 25 learning outcomes

Ready-to-use teaching activities for developing students' transformative ("inner development") skills in higher education, with learning outcomes and assessment suggestions. Reclassified onto the revised Inner Development Guide framework (Feb 2026).

transitionmakers.nl/ — IIS University of Amsterdam & EWUU alliance (TU/e, WUR, UU, UMC Utrecht)

License: Footer text says CC BY 4.0 but the badge links to CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — discrepancy flagged 2026-08-25; ask the IIS team which governs before republishing content.

Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026

Tools from this source (51)

Acting in Alignment

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Participants surface and rank their core values through imagination and ordering tasks, then examine honestly where recent actions expressed or contradicted them, and commit to…

Adapting Response Patterns

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Using Albert Ellis's ABC model (Activating event – Belief – Consequence), participants analyse their own automatic, self-sabotaging reactions under pressure, identify the unhelp…

Being Grateful

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An introduction to gratitude practice: noticing and naming what is already present and good — in writing, jars, or rounds — shifting attention from scarcity to appreciation, wit…

Body Awareness

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Across multiple sessions, participants train attention to their bodily and affective responses inside real learning and work situations — where concentration lives, how tension…

Brainstorming with Eureka

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A structured brainstorm in explicit ideation and narrowing phases: teams break a complex problem down, generate freely on cards, then converge on a simple narrative, idea, or so…

Challenge your Beliefs

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Participants surface limiting beliefs about change — "I have no influence anyway" — and actively transform them into empowering ones, working collectively and in pairs on how su…

Co-Designing Transition Experiments

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With a printable card deck and practical guidelines, teams co-design transition experiments — innovation projects that start from a societal challenge and treat learning as the…

Conscious Consumption Quest

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Participants investigate the global supply chains behind everyday products — tracing materials, labor, and impacts across the world — and confront what their own consumption pat…

Constructive Conversations

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Practicing genuine dialogue with people who hold genuinely different views on complex problems: listening for the reasoning underneath, advocating one's own perspective without…

Creating New Metaphors

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Groups examine the entrenched metaphors framing a complex issue (war on drugs, race to the top, footprint) and invent new metaphors that open different perspectives and options…

Cultivating Awe

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A solo imagination-and-reflection journey designed to evoke awe — vastness, wonder, the sense of something larger than oneself — and then harvest what it shifts: meaning, apprec…

Deep Listening

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Listening past the words: in pairs or small groups, the listener holds complete, non-judgmental attention — without inner censorship, rehearsing a reply, or steering — staying o…

Embracing Uncertainty

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Through mapping, discussion, and metaphor drawing, groups engage both cognitively and emotionally with the dimensions of uncertainty — ambiguity, complexity, unpredictability —…

Enabling Co-Creation

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Participants learn to facilitate co-creation sessions themselves: framing a real-life case, designing for inclusion and safety, hosting diverse stakeholders, and reflecting on w…

Enhancing Sensorial Connectedness

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A day with a local ecosystem: participants engage it through their senses — observing, listening, touching, collecting in situ — and reflect on interdependence and appreciation…

Exchanging Perspectives

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Structured rounds — inspired by Liberating Structures' Troika Consulting — in which participants voice and inhabit each other's perspectives on a complex or contested challenge,…

Experiencing Interdisciplinarity

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Participants mind-map one real-world case from several disciplinary perspectives, then hunt for the connections — experiencing the difference between stacking disciplines side b…

Fostering Collaborative Creativity

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Participants learn to lead brainstorming-centered co-creation themselves: hosting inclusive ideation, protecting wild ideas from early judgment, and steering groups toward break…

Fostering Resilience

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Participants share real setback experiences and the strategies that got them through — first alone in writing, then in pairs, then harvested with the group — building both a per…

4D Mapping (Social Presencing Theater)

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An embodied map of a whole social system: participants physically take the roles of its stakeholders — including marginal and non-human ones — arranging themselves as Sculpture…

Future Folktales

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Over a multi-session arc, participants craft folktales told FROM a regenerative future — drawing on future visions to build narratives of being, not just technology — and tell t…

Imagining the Future

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A guided exercise that first loosens the imagination into an expanded state and then invites a concrete envisioning of a desired future — held long enough to notice details, fee…

Inclusive Decision-Making

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Group decision-making built on the Lewis Method of Deep Democracy: every voice is actively sought, the minority "no" is heard and its wisdom added to the proposal before decidin…

Inside-Outside Presence

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Training simultaneous attentiveness: staying in contact with one's own inner state while remaining fully attentive to the surroundings and other people — practiced in exercises…

Intervision on Inner Development

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Recurring peer-coaching sessions where participants bring their own inner-development questions — a skill they're working on, a pattern they've noticed — and coach each other wi…

Inviting Non-Human Stakeholders

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Role-play that adds the missing chairs: participants embody non-human stakeholders — animals, rivers, trees, future ecosystems — inside a real case or project discussion, speaki…

Making Courageous Decisions

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Participants practice recognizing fear in the moment of decision and acting on values anyway — informed by Theory U's letting-go and letting-come: releasing the safe option, all…

Mapping the Maze

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Using the Transition Model Canvas, groups map a socio-technical transition — zero-emission mobility, circular textiles — across actors, dynamics, and intervention points, learni…

Navigating Uncertainty

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A structured critical-thinking approach for deciding under uncertainty, built on evidence-based practice: groups work a complex decision through explicit steps — what is known,…

Onboarding in Transdisciplinary Collaboration

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A team-forming opening for transdisciplinary projects: students, teachers, and external partners build meaningful connection before building work plans — sharing backgrounds, mo…

Participate as a Pro

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Teams leave the classroom to connect with local actors and co-initiate real participation: engaging professionals directly with the people affected by their work, learning to se…

Poetic Motivations

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Each participant drafts an "I poem" — a structured poem about identity and values ("I am… I believe… I carry…") — revealing the intrinsic motivations behind their engagement wit…

Positive Gossip

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Pairs "gossip" about colleagues — strictly positively: telling stories of what someone did well, as if the person weren't listening. Rounds rotate so everyone gossips and is gos…

Positive Reframing

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Participants take real negative framings — of the crisis, the project, the team's chances — and rework them into honest positive ones, testing the difference in energy and optio…

Purposeful Storytelling

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A longer arc from inner values to shared story: participants identify what drives them, find like-minded peers, formulate shared values together, and craft a story that communic…

Restorative Dialogue

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A repair practice for after classroom or team "hot moments": once a discussion has run too intense, the group returns to it deliberately — reflecting on what happened, exchangin…

Self Guided Assessment

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Learners co-create the assessment criteria for an unconventional assignment: negotiating what quality means, defending judgments, and owning the standards they will be measured…

Shared Problem Definition

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Stakeholder role-play in which participants from different disciplines and organisations must integrate their perspectives into one shared problem definition before any solution…

Socially Inclusive Research

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Using the Wheel of Power and embodied exercises, participants examine power, privilege, and intersectionality in community research — locating themselves on the wheel, feeling w…

Socio-Spatial Mapping

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On location, groups map a place's functional, natural, and social qualities — layering direct observation with local knowledge gathered on site — and integrate what the maps dis…

Step Up Your Courage

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A scale-walking coaching format in triads: each person places their current courage level for a real challenge on a physical 1–10 line, walks the scale, visualises the journey u…

Team Check-in

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An NVC-grounded ritual for teams: unhurried rounds in which each person expresses honestly how they are and what they need, received with empathic listening and no fixing — reco…

The 4E Model

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Individually and in groups, participants apply the 4E model to move from ego-system to eco-system awareness — examining how a challenge looks from progressively wider circles of…

The Humble Mindset

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Epistemic Recontextualisation in practice: confronted with new or challenging information (a video, a text), participants slow down and notice the emotions, beliefs, and assumpt…

The Power of Storytelling

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Teams craft and deliver a compelling 90-second video pitch for their project, learning story structure, audience, and delivery — then face a playful market test (Monopoly money…

The Repeating Question

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In pairs, walking: one person asks the same question again and again — "What do I find enjoyable and important in life?" — receiving each answer in silence and asking once more.…

The Superhero in Me

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Through a superhero framing, participants explore their capabilities and challenges by casting them: strengths as a superhero, compensated weaknesses as a sidekick, and challeng…

The Volcano of Change

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Structured visual dialogue on a complex issue using the Volcano metaphor (from the Technology of Participation family): groups move from surface events down through drivers to c…

Travelling Concepts

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Duos take one concept — resilience, energy, sustainability — and trace how it travels between their disciplines, watching its meaning shift en route. Interdisciplinary conversat…

Triggering Team Trust

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A team examines its own trust explicitly: assessing the fundamental elements — per Zenger & Folkman (2019): positive relationships, expertise and good judgment, consistency — ag…

Visual Narratives

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Groups build a collective narrative about stress and translate it into object-based art installations — working with creative constraints, a scent, found objects, and feedback f…

record status: drafted · added 2026-08-25