Read all about the newest output from a YELS-funded project: “DRUM (Diversity Research Umbrella Manual)”

Developed by Prof Jacqueline Goldin under the YELS 2025 Grant entitled ‘Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet’ – Pedagogy with a Heartbeat

Learning is a change in knowledge, skills or attitudes, that may affect the behavior of individuals and the institutions within which they operate. Socio-ecological learning is learning for the purpose of being not necessarily more, but often differently, responsive to social and natural environments. The notion of freesponsible brings together the idea of freedom and responsibility. The “socio-ecological model” (the Ecology of Human Development) was developed by psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner in the late 1970s, as a way to recognize that individuals affect and are affected by a complex range of social influences and nested environmental interactions (Ettekal & Mahoney 2017).  DRUM offers one of these nested socio-environmental interaction, with ripple effects which lead to a more engaged community and to changes in the way business is carrying on as usual at the individual, group and institutional levels. 

DRUM encourages a conversation with others but also a conversation that can take place through and with the many voices that we have within ourselves.  We are often pulled in so many directions as we try to make sense of the world and DRUM brings us back to the present and to authentic and care-full encounters with ourselves and with others.  The manual presents prompts which are designed to make deep conversations possible where, as Kristina Bogner from the Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, claims – ir/rational experiences can occur when we have loosen our cognitive attention and when our ability to think more relationally is potentially amplified (or less repressed). This can enable us to feel ‘multidimensional beings and space/times of the past-present-future. And, using the words of Charles Mackesy’s the Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, ‘I’m so small said the mole. Yes said the boy but you make a huge difference.’

Jacqueline offers training on-line or face to face on how to operationalise DRUM