This document discusses worldviews and how they shape perceptions of change and the future. It argues that we are currently experiencing a decline in the prevailing worldview, leading to a "change fear culture" characterized by anxiety about the unknown future. For postsecondary institutions, this means educators struggle to agree on the future of education. However, the document suggests with an understanding of worldviews and how fear arises from their decline, leaders can help address fears of change within their organizations and facilitate discussions of the future of teaching and learning despite disagreement.

1. BIO
Dr. Trent Keough
President and CEO
Portage College
trent.keough@portagecollege.ca
Trent Keough is the President and CEO of Portage College (Alberta, Canada). His
research interests include change philosophy, cultural transformation, and
leadership praxis. Trent has authored more than 40 presentations, workshops,
articles, and speeches. His research interests include intentional communities,
diversity awareness, literary nationalism, existential phenomenology,
multiculturalism, the function of colleges in rural economic development, and
most recently, the epistemology of change within postsecondary education.
Leading for a Brighter Tomorrow: Worldview and the Fear Undermining
Education’s Future
Leaders of postsecondary education work in tumultuous times (Kinser and
Hill, 2011). We are not alone. There is much to be anxious about. Our physical
environment, social contracts, and limits of reasoned possibility are all susceptible
to abrupt changes. Today’s world is rife with political uncertainty, civil
disobedience, and moral discord. There are repeated threats of imminent
economic collapse. Global warming brings untold future environmental
catastrophe. Forecasting of doom is incipient. Too many of us live in a state of
fear and uncertainty.
There is a collective obsession with expectation of the unknown.
Postsecondary institutions are not impervious to this social malaise. The sheer
rapidity of change has shocked some into denial/rebuttal of the need to
undertake self-transformation. They are experiencing unspecified change trauma.
This state exists when moving from a healthy indifference to change, i.e. the
offsetting down period when experiencing change fatigue, to delusions of
reprieve from change itself. Postsecondary institutions in denial of their own
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2. uncertainty are becoming citadels of self-justification. Preoccupied with
maintaining the status quo, they are not responding to define their present
currencies, let alone their future identities and purposes. The weakest of these
organizations are increasingly alienated from the ordinary life-expectations of
their students and communities.
Evolving social relevancy is essential for long-term sustainability of
postsecondary institutions. The speed at which relevancy needs to be reassessed,
and by whom, has changed dramatically. Educational institutions were once
respected for being ivory towers that grew in value because of the human patina
cast by their shadows. Contemporary education, however, resides in a nomadic
global village where diversity of form and content draws both students and
accolades. Tomorrow’s learning will continue to take place on-the-street, in the
job place, over the internet via social networks, and in informal environments led
not by expert authority but governed by collaborative inquiry and democratic
decision-making.
The present demands on postsecondary institutions can be at odds with
their historical purposes, origins and governance structures. Today,
postsecondary education is a customer service business. Educators respond to
learning customers’ demands for ongoing professional development and
employability skills. Postsecondary institutions function to grow economic
diversification and sustainability. Some will argue these points to the humanist
contrary. Postsecondary education was never the exclusive measure of a society’s
commitment to human development. Nor is it a singular future indicator of the
social value attributed to the learned or erudition.
Postsecondary education is in an era of reformation, one identified by
dissent and division over its purpose, function and future. New measures of
scholarship, new means for dissemination of ideas, and new avenues for
participation in knowledge dialogues are taking hold. We are in another liminal
period on the timeline of conceptual possibility. We are poised to cross a
technology threshold that will mark the end of conventional education and its
traditionalist learning paradigms. Perhaps intuitive nanotechnology will be
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3. combined with bio- genetic manipulation to effect this change. Regardless of the
means, the very best of future learning will be easy; knowledge will be on-
demand, instantaneous, and widely accessible. With open-source on-demand
knowledge moving to the consumer’s horizon, there’s a systemic obsolescence
about to occur: the end of education as profession and institution.
How and why we come to imagining this madding time, place, and future
proposition is complex. Some of its causes can be ascribed to capitalism’s
migration into the relationship economy. Capitalism’s revolutionary compatriot,
technology, has also instigated remarkable change contributing to unease. Not
the least important for educators is technology’s impact in classrooms and on the
role of the teacher. Technology has modified the rudiments of our teaching
paradigm by offering heightened engagement, gamification, badges, and
edutainment, etc. When identifying ‘how’ we come to be in tumultuous times too
much effort is expended debating the piecemeal causes of ‘where is here.’
Fractured dialogues move us further from the possibility of sharing belief in a
collective futurology. The only true means to determine ‘where is here’ is to offer
a complete etiology for the current reality.
Ordinary citizens are ill-equipped to name present cultural and historical
impulses altering courses of future history. Most do not consider the historically
conditioned present moment in relation to its immediate impact on figuring a
tomorrow. The nuances and subtleties of causation are even more difficult to
decipher when living within the ebb and flow of a transformational epoch. The
first challenge is to detach oneself from fears associated with immediate changes.
The second is to then name a wholesale ‘cultural fear of change’ out of existence.
Postsecondary leaders must do the work to name the totality of our professional
‘where is here’ fear. This action requires understanding of how worldview enjoins
us in a common belief system (cf. Valk and Bending, et. al., 2011).
When equipped with knowledge of worldview it becomes apparent that all
is not lost to postsecondary education. The fate of educators is not a negative,
inevitable one. The future of postsecondary lies with the 21st century, not the
past or immediate present. Postsecondary education must continue to transform
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4. itself by rethinking its foundational cornerstones. Those individuals who envision
the end of education as institution and social activity are unaware the death knell
is falsely sounded. The current sense of crisis in postsecondary is a socio-political
phenomenon caused by the disintegration of a prevailing worldview. Fear culture
is the product of the uncertainty that ensues when a new worldview(s) is rising to
ascendency. Understanding this phenomenon and sharing knowledge of its
current presence is a key leadership role of postsecondary leaders.
‘Worldview’ is the point of view belonging to a language and its
corresponding acculturation: “Worldview can be expressed as the fundamental
cognitive, affective, and evaluative presuppositions a group of people make about
the nature of things, and which they use to order their lives” (Wikipedia).
Language and acculturation determine how any one group perceives degree of
threat or opportunity. Within a worldview paradigm it is improbable any person
can escape restriction on how and what to think and anticipate. The formation of
cognitive process, perceptual intelligence and language are not without bias. We
have learned from quantum physics and chaos theory that observation can alter
the physical composition and behavior of what is observed. Similarly, Bakhtinian
dialogism and semiotic theory demonstrate that the act of naming and language
itself are neither politically neutral nor perspectively unbiased. Naming is an
expression of power, ownership and control. Language informs perspective with
bias for expectation, hope and fear.
Worldviews are unavoidably locus bound and are therefore susceptible to
incursive forces of ‘other’ cultures’ languages and worldviews. Shifts in global
economic power structures, intermingling of once isolated ‘other’ cultures, the
presence of others’ languages in foreign territories due to commerce and ease of
travel, and the social media impacts of the binary language logic of the WWW are
obvious additional causes of worldview instability. Networking, inclusiveness and
tolerance undermine the heterogeneity central to differentiated worldviews.
Undifferentiated worldviews are seemingly impossible but contemporary
glocalism is making another kind of worldview probable, one without definitive
physical locus.
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5. We are approaching the possibility of acculturation within the milieu of the
WWW. Web networks are nourishing the establishment of social contracts built
across geographical borders. Self-selecting memberships are utilizing WWW
etiquette and social/technical languages that create collective purposing and
social commitments defining both the present, and a possible future. Within
these groupings are the rudiments of new, voluntary social contracts. Micro-
worldviews or Web worldviews are multiplying challenges to traditional ones.
Owners of these worldviews want their learning experiences to re-affirm shared
values, personal and political expectations. The owners of these worldviews
promote exclusivity and manage memberships.
A stable worldview informs any groups’ ability to define a present reality
that is inclusive of individual differences. When a worldview is subject to external
assault or atrophy individuals are unable to form a collective definition of present
reality. They lose what affords them their individual sense of willful presence
within the whole. This need for belonging and potential for self-fulfillment by
necessity gets transferred elsewhere. Worldview decline also presents people
unable to interpret historical circumstances so as to formulate a potential or
figured tomorrow. This deficit is evident in some educators’ inability to agree on
the future for education. The ability to dream a collective utopia or formulate a
dialogue for a compelling futurology is also lost when worldview is in decline. The
power of a dystopian vision takes hold and a fear culture is born.
When worldviews run their course of holding teleological focus there is
ensuing conflict and finally transformation. Scholars working with worldview
have not explored this area in relation to contemporary change epistemology. In
Leo Apostel’s seminal definition of worldview there are six elements defining a
metaphysical teleology for knowledge, epistemology and ontological
apprehension: an explanation of the world, a futurology, a
praxeology/methodology, an epistemology, and an etiology
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldview). Drawing from the work of Apostel, the
attributes/elements of a worldview can be further explained to present a better
appreciation of the disintegration occurring in our present circumstances.
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6. Worldview offers a creation story/myth for the whole world or the
intentional portion of the figured ‘world.’ These creation myths can be biased by
nationalisms, tales of limited origin, intentional manifestos, religious views,
scientific doctrine, etc. Any worldview is a composite of these; one may dominate.
The creation myth can also in/directly explain how knowledge came to exist: by
logical deduction, fate, divine ordinance, foreordination, luck, great-man theory,
genius, research, the Word, etc. The creation story/myth provides a frame
narrative for motivating a journey of self-discovery and a search for spiritual
fulfillment, or denial thereof. Worldview provides sanction for appropriate
questing and inquiry. It defines what knowledge and lines of investigation are to
be considered ordinary, sacred or taboo.
Worldview differentiates individuals by status and ascribes them social
value. Knowledge users are often segregated from those who manage and/or
discover it. Worldviews celebrate seers and satirize buffoons in pageantry and
carnival. Though most often unrecognized, spectacle is one means to celebrate
the ‘Ethical Imperative’ that defines a ‘Code of Conduct’ influencing decision-
making. Worldview punishes intellectual and physical transgressions but does not
reward ordinary compliance. When social order requires change, calls to action or
revolution are guided by a unifying belief in creation, immutable commitment to
an absolute truth, and expectation for ethically motivated behaviour.
Calls to action prefigure an ‘other’ with contrary, challenging or undermining
potentials. The other requires conversion, suppression or annihilation. Worldview
causation is explained by what is known of the world. Interpretation of cause is
influenced by the expectation for behaviour, action or interpretation confirming
the prevailing knowledge and ontological paradigms. Cause and effect outcome is
interpreted to explain the rationale for an imminent future sustaining the
previously accepted facts of existence. When a futurology challenges previously
established fact, worldview is in decline and historical revisionism ensues.
Expectation for the future is built upon entitlement prediction affirmed in
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7. tradition. Finally, loss of worldview solidarity results in escalation of fear,
suspicion, normalized social alienation, and pervasive threat anxieties.
There is a correlation between rapidity of change eroding the prevailing
worldview and the change fear culture that dominates the contemporary.
Proponents of new attitudes to change like President Barack Obama speak of
hope, not acceptance of anomie. Obama recognizes that ordinary citizens are
bereft of the opportunity to trust in leadership (as a whole). Through
acculturation these same people have previously witnessed the ‘murders’ of: God,
the Author, Intention, Language, the University, Common Sense, etc., in the
deconstructive practices of postmodernists and their predecessors. All trust in
authority has been undermined; it has been challenged as being oppressive,
unreliable or mythical. A wholesale loss of ‘truth’ is the foundation from which
our change fear culture is built. That loss reaches back to post-WWII nihilism and
its advocacy of the scarcity of truth and assertion of isolation as the social norm.
Change fear cultures are manifestations of an unconscious social struggle with
the gradual demise of the prevailing worldview. Their attributes are not merely
negative mirror images of worldviews. Fear creates varying social responses
based on political, social, and religious entitlements and experiences. When
worldview is collapsing there is evidence of a yearning for return to a world with
fixed parameters of knowledge and unassailable authority. The rebirth of moral
leadership takes hold. There is also a heightened desire for constancy, uniformity,
and capacity for trust.
There is growth in the structuring of new social orders using collaboration
tools, partnerships, and social media, to achieve exclusive group-think and
acculturation of membership at the intentional level. There are many false starts
and failed experiments. Individuals denied the solidarity of a coherent worldview
manifest a sense of social alienation and a corresponding engagement with faux,
figured or virtual community memberships. There is a fondness for creating
artificial and trivial moments of group belonging to offset ordinary isolation and
local alienation. Tolerance for inhibition and melodrama increases. Unwilling or
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8. ready to commit to seeking universal truth, social medias mimic depth of
character, thought and meaning in the shallows of indulgence and excess.
Weakening worldviews present evidence of a search for principled life-purpose
with a corresponding spiritual currency. Once fearful to re-engage practical living
guided by principles of spiritual meaning, citizens return to this faith via new age
spirituality, animism, and intuition. Traditional religions see increased
participation, too. Excesses here are witnessed by the rise of prejudiced
fundamentalisms. In the midst of a movement to embrace élan vital, we see
ordinary citizens working to integrate virtual/fantasy identity with the corporeal
one. There remains a social delusion that the virtual can be a replacement for the
spiritual dimensions of life. When forced to face the artificial nature of on-line
living there is despondence and emptiness. A similar crisis occurs when people
are forced to confront or obliged to reconcile fantasy or virtual identities with
actual people.
Disappointment that fantasy or expectation can’t control the reality of the
world is part of a craving for an increased sense of needing to be in control.
Control can only occur within the company of like-minded individuals and is
relative, narrow. The desire to create refined and select communities is also
experienced in the workplace. Professionalization expectations are evolving more
rapidly than professional development opportunities. Fear of professional
obsolescence is conjoint with loss of a sense of personal meaning and purpose.
There is a rejection of individual capacity to maintain professional currency.
Consequently, there is the need to define an oppositional other for purposes of
blame.
Lament for imagined loss and figured responsible others is part of a yearning
for simplicity, surety and compliance. There is heightening frustration with the
ever-increasing complexity of ordinary problem solving. Often we find individuals
sharing a false assumption that a past ‘simple’ life was lived with the benefits of
contemporary knowledge. Individuals choosing to live off-grid represent one
variation of the rebirth of the social contract as a principled mutual agreement of
individuals, not between citizens and their governments. Choice empowerment
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9. facilitates the expectation for the (Platonic) republican ability to decide when
literally dialoguing together. Creating moments of votive control or facilitating
collaborative decision-making are becoming social norms. Select groups working
together also share a belief that the scarcity of truth is not directly proportional to
the number of people sharing belief in it. Truth exists outside of majority
approval. There is a rebirth of belief in absolutes, the incontrovertible, and the
immutable. Finally, there is emergence of sharing a belief that faith and hope are
central ingredients for sustaining truth.
With appreciation of change fear culture and its origins within a dying
worldview, postsecondary leaders can begin to address localized fear within their
organizations. To name that fear, we must work intentionally and with purpose
when addressing the known and speculated future changes impacting teaching
and learning. We must anticipate disagreement as to what change is necessary to
advance teaching and learning. Postsecondary leaders can utilize understanding
of worldview when articulating what needs doing. When making changes we must
respond to variegated learning customers’ unique expectations. Appreciate their
need to feel ownership, control, and the importance of creating authentic
opportunity for emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual growth.
Addressing deficiencies created by worldview decline and capitalizing on the
opportunities emerging with new ones necessitates that educators refine their
scope of economic engagement activities. Economic collapse ultimately means
forfeit of transformational potential. We must situate the present economic
circumstances in relation to historical practice and sustainability of learning
customer relationships. New opportunities uniformly reflect the supremacy of
the learning customer in the relationship economy. This assessment activity will
require new knowledge management strategies reflecting invigorated attitudes to
access and use of open source learning activities and credentials. Within the
spectrum of economic engagement institutions must segment not only by
partnership but by ancillary business processes and student employment
opportunities.
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10. Institutions with relevance and currency strategies will identify legacy systems
and impending obsolescence and implement adaptive performance measures.
They will evolve service delivery mechanisms while reducing costs to learning
customers. There will be focus on flexibility, adaptability and portability, driven by
authority, autonomy and accountability. Addressing resistance to utilization of
new technologies means growing partnerships reflecting new social contracts
built by voluntary networks and social media. Institutions must open learning
experiences to collaborative enterprises wherein SMEs are part of team learning
opportunities. All change must be grounded by the principle that a futurology is
only possible when envisioning as a group. The group must arrive at a collective
understanding of current reality. This inclusiveness will sponsor innovation and
creativity, especially when using change opportunity as inspiration to traverse
boundaries of conventional practice.
Appreciation of worldview can enable postsecondary educators to adapt to
the sociological impacts of change within their organizations. Understanding the
larger cultural context will enable leaders to respond to the sense of fear and
anxiety motivating uncertainty within their organizations. Creating a purposeful
working environment that addresses the anxieties arising from fear culture will
engender an organizational advantage in the market place. Enabling employees to
name the broader influences causing anxiety creates empowerment through
knowledge authority. The power arising from sharing a worldview that brings
social coherence eliminates the effects of isolation supported by disbelief and
distrust.
Employees working with a shared understanding of their present reality are
better able to define a preferred future. Identifying with a future state that is
inclusive of current employees will also offset fear of obsolescence. The sense of
collegiality and community that arises facilitates a commitment to a purpose
beyond just managing through difficult present circumstances. Innovation
becomes possible in the face of what would be otherwise an uncertain and
debilitating reality. Postsecondary leaders must facilitate the development of a
worldview that revitalizes the role of instruction and reasserts the purpose of
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11. learning institutions in the 21st century. A new social contract is possible between
teachers and learning customers. It is the role of postsecondary leaders to assist
in the articulation of what that social contract will be.
Apostel (9 February 2011) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldview.
Kinser, Kevin. and Hill B. (2011) Higher Education in Tumultuous Times: A
Transatlantic Dialogue on Facing Market Forces and Promoting the Common
Good, American Council on Education: 1-28.
Valk, John. and Belding S., Crumpton A., Harter N., and Reams J. (2011)
“Worldviews and Leadership: Thinking and Acting the Bigger Pictures,” Journal of
Leadership Studies, 5.2:54-63.
Worldview (9 February 2012) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view.
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