Contact us: info@integrativelearninginstitute.com 

About Us

Integrative Learning Institute

The Integrative Learning Institute (I.L.I.) offers programs and services to individuals and organizations committed to comprehensive social change. I.L.I. is a point of collaboration for the growing number of people interested in furthering the work of transformational learning and action. It's director, Jan Inglis and associates Sara Ross and  Margaret Steele, bring many years of experience and commitment to the ongoing research and development of  programs and services.

Director

Jan Inglis

Jan Inglis specializes in developmental and integral approaches to complex social issues and has presented workshops and published articles on these topics internationally. She has also produced a documentary video called A Crisis of Decision Making: What Underlies our Inability to Respond to Climate Change. She brings a well integrated background from theoretical study to application in adult development, complexity, deliberative democracy, adult education and creative media. She has an MSc in Holistic Science. She is a trained facilitator for TIP The Integral Process for Working on Complex Issues and  for moderating and framing issues for public deliberation through the National Issues Forum. As Co-director of the Calgary Institute for Integrative Body Psychotherapy, she taught and evaluated post graduate therapists for 11 years. She has worked with sustainability issues internationally and was a member of Footprints International which used participatory research and theatre to create a north/south dialogue on the ecological footprint and community sustainability.  As Program Director of a Retreat and Learning Centre, she coordinated workshops integrating community leadership, consciousness and art.  She works on approaches to global commons through Global Commons Trust www.globalcommonstrust.org and is  a  board member of ARINA www.global-arina.org,  an international non-profit organization for social change. She lives and works out of Nelson, B.C.

Associates

Sara Ross

Sara Ross (Ph.D.) has a history which includes many years as a writer, accountant, spiritual director in retreat and client work, designer and convener of public meetings and forums, action and theoretical researcher, and designer of transformative curricula. She has presented papers on integral public processes for complex policy and systemic issues and on integral developmental approaches to democratization theory, research, and praxis at various scientific conferences. She is the president of ARINA www.global-arina.org a non profit supporting integral action research for social change, She serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Public Participation and on the Management Review Board of the Integral Leadership Review. Her professional affiliations include the Society for Terrorism Research (co-founder and governing board), Society for Research in Adult Development (governing board and program committee), Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences (membership chair), and International Society of Political Psychology. She is  one of the associate authors in Bill Torbert & Associates for Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership , The Integral Process for Working on Complex Issues, and co-editor of the special double issue in World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution".

Margaret Steele

Margaret Steele (B. Comm, M.Sc.), has 25+ years experience in community development, specializing in rural and remote housing issues, program evaluation and public involvement in decision-making.   Her background includes research, policy analysis and practical experience in community development work with non-profit organizations and with local and federal government agencies.   “I believe we must be willing to move beyond our habitual ways of thinking if we want to create healthy, liveable communities in the world today.  Working with I.L.I. has brought me into contact with many people who are committed to the process of unlearning old attitudes and behaviours to make way for the new.  This gives me hope that, collectively, we will develop the capacity to meet the complex challenges of our modern world.”

Developing Integral Responses to Complex Issues
The Iceberg of Attention. This diagram below indicates the need to understand and use processes that support the transition steps of decision making and attention to layers of more complex and interconnected variables in order to arrive at comprehensive responses. Learn more

Figure 1: Developing integral responses through developmental layers of attention. Copyright © (2009) by Jan Inglis

 

Four Fields of Learning

Interior Personal Capacities Reflective and complex thinking Presence and authenticity Action Inquiry Recognizing and defusing defences Art and creativity Theoretical  Frameworks Transformational learning Systems and complexity Social evolution Adult development Deliberative Democracy Integral theory Application Framing Public Issues Moderating Public Deliberations Consulting Coaching Training Systems Analysis Ecological Economic Social Technical Governance

Complexity Intelligence

We are living in a world of increasing complexity.  While it is tempting to think we can find ways to simplify the complexity, at the Integrative Learning Institute, we believe that we need to increase our ability to meet the complexity.  We must increase our Complexity Intelligence, a term we use to describe the integration of reasoning ability, emotional maturity and social capacities needed  to meet our current societal and organizational challenges. 
 

Complexity intelligence is a natural human capacity that can develop, given the appropriate balance of challenge and support.  I.L.I.’s programs and services are designed to provide this balance.  More information about this concept can be found in the Reading Room  

 I.L.I. has developed the Four Fields of Learning – an integrated approach to learning that combines     theory and practice and supports the emergence of complexity intelligence at both the individual and societal level.  The Four Fields of Learning are:

¨      Theoretical frameworks

¨      Interior personal capacities

¨      Exterior systems analysis

¨      Application

Field 1. Theoretical Frameworks 
Through this field a variety of perspectives on creating a new lens for perceiving our world are engaged including: adult development, integral theory, transformational learning, chaos and complexity theory, social evolvement, ecological thinking, systems theory, neurobiology, generative dialogue, action research, and body mind consciousness studies. Sources include Don Beck, David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, Michael Commons, Clare Graves, Jane Jacobs, Robert Kegan, Ervin Laszlo, Jack Mezirow, Shawn Rosenberg, Sara Ross, Peter Senge, Rick Smyre, Bill Torbert, Francisco Varela, Ken Wilber, Daniel Yankelovich, Model of Hierarchical Complexity, State of the World Project, Genuine Progress Indicators, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Integrative Body Psychotherapy.

 Field 2. Interior Personal Capacities
Being a catalyst for change requires developing the inner maturity for leadership. The work in this field includes understanding and defusing old fears and defences, moving beyond individual competitiveness to connected individuality, building a capacity for self reflection and engaging with complexity, understanding one's worldview and assumptions in the context of an evolving spiral of many worldviews, approaching self and others with inquiry, connecting how we think to what we experience, developing a personal practice for staying present, authentic and open (meditation, journaling, therapy etc), exploring through art, movement and metaphors, building a support network, having the health and energy to absorb and concretely apply complex learning, having the financial and technological capacity and time to engage in this work.

 Field 3. Systems Analysis
Our current 21^st century challenges provide both the outer context and the motivation for applying this learning. The focus of this field is the analysis of  big topical issues such as climate change, poverty, or crime through mapping their interconnected sub issues and their causal connections. This allows for deeper understanding of what issues are at the 'tip' of the iceberg and which things are more root cause in nature. Once root causes are identified, remedial responses to these  can be considered that cover policy development as well as voluntary initiatives by individuals or organizations. Current life conditions impact our perceptions, assumptions  priorities  and choices and need to be included in this analysis. The self reflective capacities described in Field 2 support this level of analysis in this territory. This field requires an action research approach involving a reciprocal relationship of the researcher and the researched, the learning and the action.

Field 4. Application
This field integrates learning from fields 1, 2 and 3 into effective application to relevant situations. Real learning deepens in its application, whether in business, non-profits, volunteer initiatives or government. Programs with I.L.I .are geared to increase the capacity for individuals to influence the creation of dynamic and adaptable organizations and communities within a complex interconnected world.  A primary focus is on community engagement processes which are structured to frame approaches for  multi-stakeholder  deliberative decision making  that result in comprehensive methods for addressing complex social issues.

 

Contact us: info@integrativelearninginstitute.com