About

Training Track (1 Year)

Research Track (4 Years)

Admissions 2021/22

School of Thinking

Training Track Curriculum (1 Year)

The Training Track of the Postgraduate School of Thinking is conducted entirely in English. It takes one academic year (two semesters) to accomplish. The curriculum comprises of 750 hours of study, which includes 174 instruction /contact hours and 576 hours of flexibly scheduled individual and group work. The contact hours are a mixture of nine interactive online seminars and three on-campus experiential workshops, amounting to an average workload of 2-3 days per month. The additional individual and group work is estimated to take about 3 to 5 days per month, scheduled at students’ own pace.

Objectives

The primary aim of the Training Track of the Postgraduate School of Thinking is for the participants to develop the capacity for cultivating extraordinary intelligence: individually, as well as in their communities, teams and organisations.

‘Extraordinary’ is a progressive term. It points to a performance of thinking of a quality which continues to surprise. A thinking that proves to be more insightful, more farsighted, and more potent, than one could have normally expected or assumed. Learning how to bring one’s thinking performance beyond the threshold of the expected ‘ordinary’, again and again, results in an intelligence capacity that continuously exceeds its own limits.

To develop such capacity, the participants will acquire a combination of skills, theoretical knowledge and above all the experience of integrating these into their unique everyday practice. This informs the following specific objectives of the programme:

  • Provide a comprehensive toolkit of powerful, advanced thinking frameworks, methods and tools. The students will be able to fluently select from a rich array of advanced thinking frameworks, methods and tools (such as complexity thinking, systems thinking, design thinking, collective intelligence tools etc.), apply them in real-world circumstances, and guide others (collaborators, teams, organisations) in joining in and thinking together.
  • Facilitate an intense workout for thought. By applying and evaluating diverse thinking frameworks, the students will learn to disassociate their activity of thinking from specific patterns and methods that their thought is in the habit of using. This is how they will learn to approach frameworks they are familiar with merely as a ‘training infrastructure’ for exercising the power, plasticity and movability of thought.
  • Instil the habit of observing the quality of thinking. By learning to observe and appreciate the extraordinary thinking of others as well as of oneself, the students will learn to affirm and support the paths and stances which expand the horizons of thought.
  • Provide a general, a-disciplinary ground for thinking about thinking. The students will become fluent in crossing all kinds of boundaries, in particular those maintained by the academic disciplines and professional identities. They will learn how all historically evolved academic, professional, organisational, cultural and ideological worldviews, disciplines and categories can be deployed by the thinker, without anymore imposing on thought their impassable boundaries.

Participants

The generalist curriculum of the Training Track of the Postgraduate School of Thinking is addressed to working professionals whose interests are focused on complex, ‘wicked’, multidisciplinary, convoluted, and unprecedented phenomena — and particularly to those, for whom the outcome of their endeavors critically depends on the quality of thinking.

The (non-exhaustive) list of the professional roles, whose performance can be greatly enhanced by participating in the programme includes: intellectual and organisational leaders, think-tank members, politicians, activists, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, researchers, artists, philanthropists, managers, as well as consultants, coaches, trainers, and teachers who support such professionals in their development.

Courses

The curriculum comprises of the following five large components (courses):

Thinking About Thinking (6 study points)

If we want intelligence to continuously exceed its limits, our thinking must become fluent in crossing all kinds of boundaries. Some of the most seemingly impassable ones are those instilled by academic disciplines and professional identities in framing what kind of cognitive operations are expected and allowable within their respective confinements – and which do count as ‘thinking’ at all. The ‘Thinking about Thinking’ part of the curriculum serves to provide a background for an understanding of thinking which is in itself a-disciplinary.

This part of the curriculum is composed of six knowledge-intense modules. The modules aim to foster the meta-cognitive flexibility of the students by enriching their understanding of a selection of interrelated concepts and approaches sourced from cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, neuroscience, information science and cybernetics:

  • The brain (6h)
  • What is thinking (6h)
  • Worldviews and identities (6h)
  • Embodied cognition (4h)
  • Symbolic cognition (4h)
  • Intelligence (6h)

Each module is arranged according to the following general schema:

The entire ‘Thinking about Thinking’ course comprises 32 hours of instruction and 124 hours of individual work (reading and writing). Instruction is carried out in a high quality academic style, featuring a dynamic mixture of lectures, seminar-style discussions, reading assignments and quizzes.

Thinking Toolkit (12 study points)

The largest part of the curriculum provides the students with a rich array of advanced thinking frameworks, methods and tools (such as complexity thinking, systems thinking, design thinking, collective intelligence tools etc.)
The objectives of the ‘Toolkit’ modules are two-layered. The basic objectives are for the students to become fluent in understanding and selecting the relevant methods and tools, applying them in real-world circumstances, and guiding others (collaborators, teams, organisations) in joining in and thinking together. The deeper aims, however, are flexibility and freedom. By knowing and confidently applying more than one thinking framework, and by being able to observe and evaluate affordances and limitations of each, the students will exercise the power, plasticity, and movability of thought itself – vis a vis any specific framework or method.

The twelve competency building modules provide a wide selection of advanced thinking frameworks, methods and tools while facilitating an intense workout for the agility of thought. The modules include:

  • Logical thinking and reasoning (6h)
  • Fallacies and biases (6h)
  • Critical thinking (6h)
  • Divergent and lateral thinking (6h)
  • Extended mind (6h)
  • Co-thinking (6h)
  • Ethical thinking (6h)
  • Dialectical thinking (6h)
  • Systems thinking (6h)
  • Complexity thinking (6h)
  • Design thinking and research (6h)
  • Game thinking (6h)

Each module is arranged according to the following general schema:

The  ‘Thinking Toolkit’ course comprises 72 hours of instruction and 240 hours of individual work (individual exercises and writing). Instruction is carried out in an interactive, hands(heads)-on manner. The teaching methods include group exercises, individual and group experimentation, mini-lectures, discussions, teamwork, games and practical assignments. Each module is preceded by a reading assignment, sometimes supplemented by a pre-work exercise  documented in a correspondence between the participants and the instructor.

Engaged Thinking (3 study points)

From its inception the VUB has always prided itself on its guiding philosophy of Free Thinking, as reflected in its mottos ‘Thinking should never submit itself’, ‘Reason and Engage’ and ‘Nothing is unthinkable’, and more generally in its striving for diversity of perspectives, interdisciplinary collaboration, and engagement with contemporary issues. The free, critical, creative and independent thinking, being the focus of our programme, constitutes a core element of the university’s DNA and is consistently taught in several well established open seminar series, organised around the campus.

Our programme interlinks these initiatives, making the participation in the selected series into an integral part the curriculum. The students select at least one among the on-going series and follow it throughout one semester. In addition to the regular participation, the students carry out an observation assignment designed to advance their understanding of the processes of co-thinking.

The list of available seminars includes:

  • Crosstalks: a series of open dialogues between academic and corporate researchers, philosophers, artists, designers, policymakers and citizens;
  • Back to Thinking: an online podcast series of the VUB Engage, a broad participatory trajectory of the VUB.
  • Reason and Engage: a university-wide course that stimulates students to reflect about controversial, contemporary issues;
  • Food for Thought: a series of lunch meetings in which global, present-day issues are discussed by academics from different disciplines;
  • Think-tank Poincaré: a flexible group of VUB researchers reflecting about contemporary issues, such as cities, that touch on many disciplines;
  • Mindblowers: a series of performances by scientists and artists intended to inspire the public to reflect about revolutionary new ideas;
  • The VUB Honours programme: selected students from all faculties debate and reflect with experts on important scientific developments and their relation to society;
  • ECCO seminars: a long-running series of weekly interdisciplinary seminars and discussions organized by the Center Leo Apostel with presenters from around the world.

This component of the curriculum assumes that the students will allocate 26 hours to the participation in the seminar series of their choice and 48 hours to the assignment. Additionally, each student receives 1 hour of individual consultation.

Beautiful Minds (3 study points)

To continuously advance, thinking must select between the possible patterns and paths, discerning ones that are more promising, less explored etc. For that, one needs to be able to observe the potentials of various stances and notice when they expand the horizons of thought. By learning to notice, observe, affirm, and celebrate the extraordinary thinking of others, the thinker develops a fundamental competence necessary for fostering the extraordinary intelligence.

‘Beautiful Minds’ is a course focused entirely on the development of the habit and skill to affirm the extraordinary quality of the cognitive performance in others. The course comprises 14 hours of workshops and 60 hours of team work dedicated to a group assignment. Each group receives a 1-hour consultation to support their study.

Thinking Studio (5 study points)

An integrative baseline of the programme is provided by the ‘Thinking Studio’: a series of interactive workshops conducted according to the methodology of experiential learning. The workshops provide a group learning environment for integrating the teaching and learning processes happening in the entire programme.

Special emphasis is put on the integration of the new knowledge, ideas, and skills into the unique everyday practice of each student. Towards this goal, two major (exercise and writing) assignments will be carried out.

This component comprises 26 hours of workshops, 2 hours of consultations, 52 hours dedicated to the exercises and 52 hours dedicated to writing the final reports.

Workflows

The detailed schedules, assignments and more can be found in the ‘Workflows’ section of the website – see the menu in the top right corner.

Group Size

Number of the Track Track students in one group: min. 16, max. 26. (Additional places are foreseen for the SoT Fellows and Researchers.)

Study Points

The full programme comprises 29 study points. For a detailed breakdown of the allocation of points, instruction hours and study hours see ‘Curriculum Structure.pdf‘.

Completion Requirements

In order to successfully graduate from the programme and obtain the certificate of completion the students are required to meet the following requirements within the respective allocated timeframes (as specified by each assignment):

  • Attendance: minimum 80%.
  • Assignments:
    1. ‘Thinking about Thinking’ course: pass 2 knowledge quizzes with at least 80% correct answers (each quiz can be re-taken once).
    2. ‘Thinking Toolkit’ course: complete at least 80% of the pre-work assignments and integrate them in the Portfolio whenever applicable.
    3. ‘Engaged Thinking’ course: record 26 hours of self-observation (logs in the Portfolio Task 1).
    4. ‘Beautiful Minds’ course: give the BM presentation.
    5. Thinking Studio’ course: complete the Portfolio Tasks 2 and 3.

Certificate

Upon successful fulfilment of the completion requirements listed above, a  ‘Postgraduate Certificate School of Thinking – Field of study Philosophy and Moral Sciences’ will be awarded by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

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