If one characteristic typifies Loek Schoenmakers, then it is the unifier. Like a thread in life and work – at home and abroad – Loek discovers over time that a sustainable world, and sustainable change requires the re-humanization of change processes. Where nowadays still the paradigm dominates of a makeable and controllable, predictable (education) world, where people are seen as instruments within the change and deployed, a shift to a new paradigm is increasingly visible. From an individualistic orientation to a relationally oriented orientation where people construct reality, the world or change together with others on the basis of connection and dialogue. Providing space for improvisation, for reflective and reflexive practices. And most of all to co-conctruct better and hopeful worlds which leads to more wellbeing of all.
The ideas of Social Constructionism are the foundation of Loek’s work. Putting people at the center of change processes. Being seen, heard and valued by voice and influence on those processes makes people move and stay in motion. Interactions between people create reality, as it were. Giving meaning to and having vocie in change processes increases the chance of sustainability. It’s about Appreciation, Building bridges, Collaborative relating and Dialogue. Making sustainability sustainable is seen as a dynamic concept.
Loek Schoenmakers is owner of Appreciative Change Works since 2011, has worked a lifetime within education as a teacher, school leader, coach, school advisor, teacher trainer, researcher, developer and policy advisor both in the Netherlands and abroad including Aruba, Suriname, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Belgium. In 2011 he obtained his doctorate from Tilburg University in cooperation with the Taos Institute on the basis of a large innovation project in Suriname for Primary Education. Is coordinator of TAOS Europe. Loek Schoenmakers is guest lecturer at Anton de Kom University in Paramaribo within various Master programs. He is also a core lecturer and developer within the Master Learning and Innovation, the Master Education and Technology and the Master Inclusive Education. He wrote several publications including Happily Different (2014) and Realizing Sustainable Education Together( 2016).