On 30th January 2026, we looked at what has helped members to root your practice in ethics and social justice.
Let’s here what two people shared:
“My awareness of real power I exercise over people’s lives. Decisions like child protection measures or access to certain forms of support highly depend on my professional assessment and criteria. At the same time, I find a huge contradiction in holding this level ofpower over people while trying to build a trusting relationship with them (as the tool that makes everything else work). Staying aware of that contradiction is what keeps me deeply connected to the ethical core of my profession, as I need to reflect about my decisions all the time.”
“Realising that I have social capital by being part of participatory learning networks, whereas my colleagues in conflict-affected/ electricity and connection-patchy places like Myanmar are not precisely because they are dealing with other, more pressing things. I received an opportunity to become certified as a practitioner of AI, but realised I can’t just keep this opportunity to myself. Other educators I know in those contexts I mentioned also need to keep up to date with AI, so I reminded myself to keep sharing the opportunities I get. It’s not just about me; they all need to know, too. And ethically it would also be wrong for me to not share information that would help protect themselves and their students (as well as augment what they do).” (Access the training here: https://www.polisync.org/ai-certificate)
One group member has been thinking about change as they read the paper “The Silent Transformation” by R Chia. It explores different themes about change.
- First, there are different types of change: a) forced change and b) emergent change. Emergent change occurs when things subtly adjust themselves, but you create space and supportive conditions for change to happen. Here, people have autonomy to adjust things that weren’t working rather than having a change imposed. It allows natural causes of correction and change to take place.
- Change is not a singular event that happens. Change is constantly happening without our conscious awareness (e.g., weather and nature). The notion that we are ever in a stable place without any change is ‘nonsense’ because everything changes all the time. Us being in control of anything is also an illusion because we’re not necessarily in control of anything, and all the variables that can happen at any point.
- Stability is something that happens when we talk about Change Management. What we do is wrestle a period of control or stability out of an ongoing, changing situation. We’re not managing a period of instability, and then everything is stable again, because everything is always moving and changing.
If you want to convert awareness to will to action, you have to evolve with them and the times.
So what do we DO to root our practice in ethics and social justice?
We reflect on power imbalance when making decisions; read articles; work in the lifespace; sharing opportunities – converting awareness to will to action.
