Description
What do you learn on the postgraduate programme?
The primary aim of the Postgraduate School of Thinking is to help the students to challenge and expand their understanding of themselves and the world – to outgrow rigid simplifications, black-or-white choices, and predefined narratives. This goal is supported by:
- Learning multiple languages to think and talk about thinking. The students will be able to draw from rich array of advanced academic frameworks and models (e.g., complexity thinking, systems thinking, dialectics, lateral thinking) to discover new ways of looking at decision-making, problem solving and other, less pragmatic, forms of thinking.
- Facilitating an intense workout for thought. The students will get more accustomed to managing ambiguity and learn to approach it in a more creative manner by applying and evaluating diverse thinking frameworks to ‘wicked’, complex and ill-defined problems.
- Practicing the habit of observing thinking. The students will purposefully observe groups engaged in thinking together as well as their own minds. This practice will make them more sensitive to quality of thinking, and able to appreciate and reinforce extraordinary thinking when it occurs in others and themselves.
- Recognizing and appreciating diversity in thinking. The students will share their thinking with a diverse group of people and practice the art of appreciating other minds. This will provide a space to explore differences more profoundly than in typical social situations, helping to add new points of view to the repertoire of everybody involved.
- Bringing the new understanding into personal and professional practice. The students will be supported in translating their insights into new ways of engaging with their personal and professional lives, expanding the learning from the purely intellectual and academic into a more complex, emotional and behavioural
Find out more about this programme
The strenghts of our School of Thinking programme
- A mixture of deep, academic exploration with personal refection and practical, real-life applications,
- A toolkit of varied, cutting-edge methods and frameworks of thinking
- A small group of diverse students contributing their advanced expertise and perspective during interactive workshops
- A choice of fully remote or on-campus learning paths to best integrate with your personal and professional life.
Discover all our general strenghts as a university
Student reviews of the course
- Lies Poigne | Student at the School of Thinking (2019-2020), Publisher at Academia Press
"What an inspiring and refreshing experience, this Postgraduate. The joy of being a student again, the miracle of meeting so many like-minded people and the bittersweet frustration of not having enough time to read all you want to read about the subjects!'"
- Gys Godderis | Student at the School of Thinking (2019-2020), Founder of Planet Polaris - Clever & Cool
"The School of Thinking provides a unique way to integrate information, tools, data, techniques, perspectives, concepts and theories from multiple disciplines to provide a fundamental understanding of how thinking processes are involved in every part of life. A multi-creative, sometimes confrontational but must-experience approach, a brainiac adventure and an eyeopener."
- Sacha Moens | Student at the School of Thinking (2020-2021)
"School of Thinking feels like coming home."
- Gunther van Lany | Student at the School of Thinking (2021-2022), Strategic Leader @ TBWA Group Belgium
"'Welcome to School of Thinking. A school of craziness, passion, logic, weirdness, transformation, intelligence, philosophy and above all... personal growth"
After graduation
Our graduates return to their professional lives with new vigour, a more flexible mindset and the ability to look at problems differently. The attention that focused primarily on the content of everyday tasks can now willigly be shifted to noticing the process - the particular way in which assumptions and operations result in the usual outcomes, including well-practiced, traditional ways of getting stuck. This offers new degrees of freedom in approaching one' s professional and personal challenges - they may be solved differently or abandoned for more interesting and productive ones.
Discover more
Would you like to know more about this VUB programme? Go to schoolofthinking.be to get acquainted with the specific course description or e-mail us to schedule a remote call about the program.
More info on the VUB website