The development of adults over a lifetime has been well researched and understood. It is time for this insight into the basis for life-long learning to enter the everyday practice of adult learning providers. This innovative three-year project establishes a strategic partnership among a highly complementary consortium of organisations and practitioners in this field. Cognitive adult development tools can measure the capability of adult people to think: "how do I construct the world I take as real?", and to take responsibility: "How do I decide and take action, and for whom?" Knowing this in qualitative detail allows the developing and qualifying of candidates for positions of any degree of responsibility and complexity, including political office and high level leadership positions. The corresponding assessments are so far reserved for people in such positions and with a budget. This project aims to make the developmental insights accessible for a wider audience across Europe. We are measuring a cohort of around 40 adults at the beginning of the project and again at the end of it and demonstrate how such high-quality assessments can be operated for people to support their capacity to successfully be in leadership roles in society or in organisations. We link with political and social activist groups that redesign talent identification and selection processes with the help of developmental assessments. We are developing coaching and facilitation tools based on cognitive measurements and thinking tools ("mind openers") that not only help addressing unsolvable and highly complex issues, they also support the lasting cognitive development of the learners. Finally, we develop software components that together allow a fast online self assessment of development of both learning content and learners themself. The resulting websites address a community of life long learners, the international "integral" community of around 4000 people known so far, itself interested in adult development among many other contemporary learning topics. The second audience are potentially over 40.000 young adults who used to come together in music festivals. Many among these have developed skills and matured in completely informal ways. The online self-assessment will take their experience into a developmental scale and thus allow them to access learning opportunities that fit their current learning potential. We will scientifically cross-check the developmental assessments for the learning platforms with the results from the highly qualitative face-to-face assessments and thus validate the online results. We will share the various results in a number of expert events, translate the learning platform in various European languages and provide ample opportunities for learning providers to access the new developments for their own use, be it in the field of adult learning and coaching, selection of learning cohorts, developing talent for increasingly complex roles or online learning platforms where the learners potential is the guiding principle for their accessing learning content. The online application of cognitive adult developmental measurements will allow many people to be seen at their current potential, irrespective of their formal education. Learning offers can be better targeted, and people referred to learning offers across scenes and contexts.
We set out to work with a few well researched methodologies and formats to gain better insight into the applicability - to gain deeper practical insights into the work of Otto Laske's CDF (constructive developmental framework) - to be able to apply this and other methodologies with a number of leaders in various fields (business, civic organisations, politics) - to make the methodology of the CDF accessible to a wider audience across Europe - to form a strategic partnership among European organisations involved in "adult" or "inner" development and dialectical thinking - to practice, learn about and also develop coaching and consulting tools that help todays leaders to gain the capacities needed in order to drive the changes necessary - to build a lasting network of practitioners in the respective fields who learn with and from each other - to develop software tools that help gain insights into developmental potential of people and allow conclusions for developmental needs.
In applying for the project we address the collective need to develop capacities, skills and capabilities helping us to deal better with the multiple challenges (environmental, political, social etc.) ahead. We saw that especially leaders are often left alone with the decisions they need to make. In addition the well researched life-long learning and development of adults is much ignored in the practice of today's leaders. We wanted to find out what today's leaders in business, politics and civic society need to learn to be able to address the crises we are finding ourselves in and to learn, practice and describe methodologies that help foster what leaders need to learn. We wanted to form a strategic and lasting partnership working with these methodologies and make them accessible for a broader public. We held the assumption that the cognitive and social-emotional dimensions of Otto Laske's Constructive Developmental Framework would be helpful in addressing these needs.