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The Agents of Change program is a two-year, project-based learning program to develop Extension Professionals’ capacity to engage in Adaptive and Transformative Leadership. Its primary goal is to develop the capacity of Extension Professionals to engage in leadership to create more diverse, equitable, inclusive and just Extension programs and community change initiatives. This manuscript describes the program and an initial evaluation and results.

Results of an evaluation of the first year of the program indicate that regular training sessions and support are appropriate for leadership development and that Extension Professionals are using the learning, awareness and tools from this program to address challenges with Adaptive and Transformative Leadership elements. Also, Extension professionals demonstrated commitment to personal growth, community engagement and understanding of their multifaceted roles as change agents.

Participants are sharing resources from the program with colleagues, leading meetings differently, questioning the status quo and pushing others to try new ways forward.

The purpose of this paper is to explore domestic experiential travel by Chinese millennials, a group of consumers who will increasingly influence the global travel and tourism industry.

A qualitative research method was adopted to explore motivations and memorable experiences of Chinese millennials who successfully mountain biked the Qinghai–Tibet Highway in China.

For Chinese millennial mountain bikers in Tibet, experiential travel motivations and experiences are important. During the trip, they challenged their mental and physical abilities, enjoyed nature, bonded with friends and perceived a warm welcome by Tibetan families. This study adds to existing knowledge on experiential travel, as it was found that transformation was perceived as important outcome of the trip. Participants perceived personal change in attitude and behaviour, which will help them face everyday life challenges.

Further research could focus on gaining insight into other types of Chinese adventure tourists, on comparing wishes and demands of Chinese with other mountain bikers and on developments in transformative travel.

Adventure tourism organisations could adjust their tourism product range to cater more for Chinese millennials who aim to improve their physical and mental skills.

In-depth research into motivations and experiences of Chinese millennials is scarce. The influence of Chinese millennials on the tourism market is already large and will continue to increase.

The paper aims to investigate the practices facilitating the transformation of healthcare services, understanding the resulting outcomes in terms of well-being and uplifting changes. a systematic literature review (SLR) focusing on analyzing the healthcare sector under the transformative service research (TSR) theoretical domain is conducted to achieve this goal.

Employing a structured SLR developed based on the PRISMA protocol (Pickering and Byrne, 2014; Pickering et al., 2015) and using Scopus and WoS databases, the study identifies and analyzes 49 papers published between 2021 and 2022. Content analysis is used to classify and analyze the papers.

The SLR reveals four transformative practices (how) within the healthcare sector under the TSR domain, each linked to specific well-being outcomes (what). The analysis shows that both practices and outcomes are mainly patient-related. An integrative framework for transformative healthcare service is presented and critically examined to identify research gaps and define the trajectory for the future development of TSR in healthcare. In addition, managerial implications are provided to guide practitioners.

This research is among the first to analyze TSR literature in the context of healthcare. The study critically examines the TSR’s impact on the sector’s transformation, providing insights for future research and offering a roadmap for healthcare practitioners to facilitate uplifting changes.

Mezirow's theory of transformative learning aims to evoke change on a deeper level of learning. This qualitative study with 38 pre-service teachers enrolled in a Master's degree programme for teacher education in Austria used semi-structured interviews to explore how diversity skills can transform after diversity training applying Mezirow's theory of transformative learning. In these trainings, a disorienting dilemma was placed at the centre of the diversity training from which transformative learning took its start.

In an increasingly diversified school system, diversity skills have become a pedagogical necessity for teachers in their future workplace. However, many teachers state not feeling adequately prepared for diversity within higher education and their attitudes towards diversity oftentimes remain unchanged despite diversity training.

The findings were deduced from structured content analysis. They show that the diversity trainings led to new cultural frames of reference for the study participants on a cognitive and social level, but to a smaller extent on an emotional level.

The study follows a different approach than “typical” diversity trainings through Mezirow's theory on transformative learning contributing to making a real change to preparing students for their workplaces in diversified Austrian schools.

Organizations will be key to realizing the “transformative change for humanity” now being called for. However, the complexity calls for new ways of facilitating change and organizational learning; it also calls for moving beyond sustainability to develop practices that restore and regenerate the world in which we live. Above all, it calls for the development of new frameworks, practices, mindset and capabilities to hold space for and facilitate such transformation, to dance with the “Logic of Life.” The purpose of this study is to contribute to advancing the current leading frameworks and practices of facilitating learning and development towards the enabling of regenerative transformative change in organizations and society.

This study is based on an exploratory qualitative analysis of a facilitation prototype that expands the current framework and practice of Appreciative Inquiry Summits toward regeneration.

This study presents four paradoxes of regenerative facilitation to guide the dance for life in complex ecosystems. It also identifies that the dance needs to be widened, towards inviting more frequently the ends of the four paradoxes noted as regenerative, negative emotions, inner and more-than-human.

This study explores the intersection of practices and frameworks for facilitating complexity with principles from regenerative leadership and complexity theory, potentially making an important contribution to the urgent and widespread need to facilitate a regenerative transformative change for humanity, society and our organizations.

This study aims to explore how the boundary between science and society can be addressed to support the transformation of higher education towards sustainable development (HESD) in the sense of the whole institution approach. It analyses students’ learning experiences in self-led sustainability projects conducted outside formal curricula to highlight their potential contribution to HESD. The students’ projects are conceived as learning spaces in “sustainability-oriented ecologies of learning” (Wals, 2020) in which five learning dimensions can be examined.

Using an iterative, grounded-theory-inspired qualitative approach and sensitising concepts, 13 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted exploring students’ learning experiences. Interviews were categorised in MAXQDA and analysed against a literature review.

Results revealed that students’ experiences of non-formal learning in self-led projects triggered deep learning and change agency. Trust, social cohesion, empowerment and self-efficacy were both results and conditions of learning. Students’ learnings are classified according to higher education institutions’ (HEIs) sustainability agendas, providing systematised insights for HEIs regarding their accommodative, reformative or transformative (Sterling, 2021) path to sustainable development.

The education for sustainable development (ESD) debate focuses mainly on ESD competences in formal settings. Few studies explore students’ learnings where formal and non-formal learning meet. This article investigates a space where students interact with different actors from society while remaining rooted in their HEIs. When acting as “change agents” in this hybrid context, students can also become “boundary agents” helping their HEIs move the sustainability agenda forward towards a whole institution approach. Learning from students’ learnings is thus proposed as a lever for transformation.

This study aims to investigate how Living Labs of Van Hall Larenstein UAS perform as sustainability-oriented, transdisciplinary learning environments. It shows how the sustainable development goals (SDGs) can be used as a compass and debates the sustainability impact of applied research.

A case study approach was adopted, including a literature review, scoping visits, online workshops and peer-to-peer inter-vision/learning, using the SDGs as a compass and framework for analysis.

Most Living Labs use a “silo-approach” on the SDGs and are designed from a technological-expert perspective. This results in blind spots, particularly on SDGs related to reducing socio-economic inequality and just institutions. Debating unsustainable systems, cultures and practices is avoided. To contribute to sustainability transitions, universities need to invest in developing transformative capacity. This refers to SDG-transition competences such as collaborative communication, constructively engaging with diversity and conflicts, discussing values, norms and ethics and encouraging reflexivity.

Mainly lecturer-researchers were involved in the study. COVID-19 travel restrictions hindered the research at the grassroots level in India and Indonesia.

The study revealed the importance of creating Living Labs as safe and brave inter- and transdisciplinary learning environments to practice reflexivity: encouraging students, researchers and stakeholders to look at sustainability issues from plural perspectives and questioning unsustainable practices, which combined lead to changing perceptions, practices and relations and a deeper understanding of how change happens. The SDGs as a compass method supports reflexivity among stakeholders and in redirecting strategies towards a sustainable future.

This paper aims to increase related knowledge across personal, social and ecological dimensions of sustainability and how it can be applied to support transformative learning.

The paper provides a reflexive case study of the design, content and impact of a course on eco-justice that integrates relational learning with an equity and justice lens. The reflexive case study provides a critical, exploratory self-assessment, including interviews, group discussions and surveys with key stakeholders and course participants.

The results show how relational approaches can support transformative learning for sustainability and provide concrete practices, pathways and recommendations for curricula development that other universities/training institutions could follow or learn from.

Sustainability research, practice and education generally focuses on structural or systemic factors of transformation (e.g. technology, governance and policy) without due consideration as to how institutions and systems are shaping and shaped by the transformation of personal agency and subjectivity. This presents a vast untapped and under-studied potential for addressing deep leverage points for change by using a relational approach to link personal, societal and ecological transformations for sustainability.

This paper aims to examine critically the literature on transformational tourism and explore a research agenda for a post-COVID future.

A systematic review of the transformational tourism literature is performed over a 42-year period from 1978 to 2020.

Further research is required in terms of how transformative experiences should be calibrated and measured both in qualitative and quantitative terms, particularly from the perspective of how tourists are transformed by their experiences. Similarly, the nature and depth of these transformative processes remain poorly understood, particularly given the many different types of tourism associated with transformative experiences, which range from religious pilgrimages to backpacking and include several forms of ecotourism.

Future research directions for transformational tourism are discussed with regard to how COVID-19 will transform the dynamics of tourism and travel, including the role of new smart technologies in the creation of enhanced transformational experiences, and the changing expectations and perceptions of transformative travel in the post-COVID era. In addition, the researchers call for future studies on transformational tourism to explore the role of host communities in the delivery of meaningful visitor experiences.

Transformational tourism is an emerging body of research, which has attracted a growing level of interest among tourism scholars in recent years. However, to this date, a systematic review of published literature in this field has not been conducted yet in a holistic sense. This paper offers a framework for future research in this field.

There is little knowledge to date regarding the influence of the COVID-19 health crisis on tourists' intention to travel differently in the future. This paper addresses this and explores its determinants. The objective of the present study is to determine to what extent the Spanish tourists affected by COVID-19 may change the way they travel in the future, according to the perceived risk of travel in a pandemic context.

Between May and June 2020, the authors conducted a survey with a sample population of Spanish tourists who were resident in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic, for the purposes of studying the role of attitudes and risk in the intention to change the way they want to travel in the future. Cluster analysis and one-way ANOVA were conducted to assess differences among the respondents. Finally, some models were built using the linear regression technique in order to evaluate the role of attitudes in the tourists' adaptive response to the perceived risk of travel.

Results confirm the formation of a new way of life influencing tourists' intentions to travel more sustainably. Accordingly, tourists with a previous environmental attitude are less interested in visiting mass tourism beach destinations in the future. However, changes in the way some tourists travel can also be read as an adaptive and temporary response to the perceived risk of contracting the disease, and do not point to a reduction of the vital importance of tourism in their lives.

The exploratory nature of the study and the lack of similar international analyses does not allow the authors to contrast its results at a global level, though it offers a starting point for future research in other countries. There are also methodological limitations, since the field work was carried out between the first and second waves of the disease, at a time when the pandemic was in remission, possibly affecting the orientation of some responses, given the desire to recover normalcy and “normal” travel, and this may have influenced the priority given to tourism.

This study gives new insights into the debate on the social transformation of the collective consciousness. Despite some signs of change, part of the Spanish tourists are still anchored in traditional tourism practices embedded in cultural factors, which can hinder sustainability in the Spanish tourism industry. The experience of the COVID-19 crisis has not been sufficient to change the declared travel habits of Spanish tourists. Therefore, progress towards the definition of a new tourism system that implies the effective transformation of demand will require applying policies and promoting institutional innovation and education to create paths that facilitate transformative experiences.

The study is focused on the analysis of the relationship between attitudes and risk perception, including novel elements that enrich the academic debate on social progress in the transformation of tourism and the possibilities of promoting a reset from the demand side. Moreover, it incorporates, for the first time, the COVID-19 as it was experienced as an explanatory variable to analyse the changing travel attitudes in a post-COVID-19 era. The analysis of the psychosocial mechanisms of risk offers a good opportunity for a better assessment of post-pandemic demand risk perception. Finally, the study offers empirical evidence on how Spanish tourists are reimagining their next and future holidays, which can be highly valuable for destination managers.