Tidied transcript

What is a Deliberately Developmental Space (DDS)?

Okay, so I want to talk about the deliberately developmental spaces course. And I think we come to the what is a deliberately developmental space section.

To recap, we have: it's deliberate and it's developmental—so it's consciously developmental. It's consciously cultivating inner capacities. It's doing so, I think, in a theory-informed and multidimensional way—at least, the more it is like that, the stronger the DDS. The more it also involves inner capacities, particularly cognitive capacities, as well as emotional capacities—the waking up, cleaning up, and growing up.

It's not just about cognitive complexity in the sense of the skills one conventionally learns in educational systems today—though one, of course, learns other skills. I think there’s actually a collective or community aspect as well. There’s a sustained, relatively long-term engagement, often tied to a physical space.

I think if I had the time, I’d also help prepare this system I did with Mark Santolini again.

Introducing DDS Through Examples

I think in this session, it would be better to begin very openly by asking people to think of examples or to give them examples and ask them to assess where they would place them on a spectrum.

We might prompt them with some examples like:

Harvard University
A Buddhist monastery
A quick convention or conference
A school (e.g., Rockwood Park School, a Christian Memorial School)
Some examples from a DDS website

They could even go off into small groups, be given one of these, and assess it by looking at the website or based on what they already know.

Understanding DDS as a Perspective

From there, we start to say: there are factors that make it more or less likely that a space is deliberately developmental. It’s not a binary zero-one distinction. It’s also a perspective.

I want to emphasize that this is a way of looking at things. Just as you could evaluate a space based on economic productivity or training (e.g., does it provide economically useful skills?), a DDS perspective offers a different assessment. It’s a lens for evaluating existing environments, not something that exists independently as a category.

We could also capture other factors people think are important. They might describe practice hubs or birthright hubs—then we could discuss features of DDSs that we’d be particularly interested in.

We might also look at the ecology of practices in a DDS, how they relate to developmental models, or even what models shape the space in terms of development.

How to Develop DDSs

Section four is about how to develop DDSs.

Here, we might have the example of Valerie developing her psychology practice and presenting about that. I think that would be the second part of day three, maybe day four.

Field Building & Dissemination

Days four and five would focus more on: How do we develop more DDSs or introduce this framing? The framing shapes how we develop things.

People will continue to develop schools, organizations, and institutions, but they could think of them through the DDS frame. It’s not about creating a whole new type of space, but rather informing and transforming existing spaces.

So, how do we start disseminating this idea and vision and fostering more of these kinds of spaces—particularly strong-form DDSs and experimental or innovative spaces?

This is the field-building piece. How do we:

Get more people involved?
Expand the network?
Strengthen the ecosystem of DDSs?

Closing & Synthesis

Finally, there would be a wrap-up—what we learned in the course, what we’ve done, and why it matters.

This might be the point where I come back to the ASOS white paper and say: Deliberately Developmental Spaces are a key part of the “how” of getting to a new paradigm.

There’s a lot of interest in new paradigm thinking, but DDSs are a practical “how”—a concrete way of structuring spaces for deep human development.

A Useful Metaphor: Buddhist Monasticism and Mindfulness

I think the metaphor of Buddhist monasticism and mindfulness might be useful here.

There’s a general perspective on life that includes mindfulness—which then informs different domains:

Mindful schools
Mindful eating
Mindful business

But then there are monasteries, which represent the strong form—a space where intensive cultivation and practice take place.

Similarly, we can see DDSs as both a frame (a way of seeing things) and as a realized form (actual spaces that embody this developmental intensity). The strongest DDSs function much like monasteries—dedicated, intensive, developmental spaces where inner growth and cultural evolution are cultivated in a theory-informed, multidimensional, experimental way.

That’s a good closing point for how we think about Deliberately Developmental Spaces.

Raw 2

Okay, so I want to talk about the deliberately developmental spaces course. And I think we come to like what what is a deliberately developmental space section. To recap, we have it's deliberate. It's developmental. So it's consciously developmental. It's consciously cultivating the capacities, inner capacities. It's doing so, I think, in a theory-informed and a multidimensional way, at least the more that it's like that. And the more that it also involves, you know, inner capacity strictly involves cognitive capacities as well, of course. with particularly meaning maybe other kind of emotional, the waking up, the cleaning up, and the growing up, not just like cognitive complexity of the kind of skills, cognitive skills that one learns conventionally in educational systems today, though one of course learns other skills. I think there's actually a collective aspect or a community aspect. both, you know, again, and sustained, so there's kind of relatively long-term engagement, often physical spaces that I have to be. I think if I had the time, I'd also help prepare this system I did with Mark Santolini again. Okay, so I think though in this session, it would be better to begin very openly by asking people to think of examples I said or give them examples and ask them to assess you know where you put them on the line you know And that, you know, we might prompt them with some examples like Harvard, a Buddhist monastery, uh, a quick convention. school, Rockwood Park School, which is Christian Memorial School, or maybe some of the examples we have on a DDS website. And they can even go off for like in little groups and be given one of those if I had the time to repair it and assess it by looking at the website and what they know. So, okay, so that's, that's one part. And I think then we, so we started to say like there's these kind of factors that make it more likely that you're doing with his space. It's not zero one and six. And it's also a perspective. I think I want to emphasize this from this point, that this is a way of looking at things. Just as you could say, you could have a different plane. You could be looking at a frame which was about economically productive or training, providing skills are economic productive. And there would again be a different assessment. criteria and it would be a way of looking at existing environments from that frames it's not it's not like a something is it is a yeah it's a perspective on what is already happening I think we could also capture other factors people thought were important because it described a birthright practice hub practice hub and then we could also just talk about the features that we then would be interested in you can be looking at at ecology of practices in a deliberately space how they relate to the models or even what models that formed by of in a development and Yeah, so I think that's quite good. And I think section four was like how to develop them. So here we might have the example of Valerie developing her practice psychology and presenting about that. and I think, yeah, I think that will be like day, it's like that, that's almost all second part of day three, maybe day four. And five are more like then, okay, how do you develop? more DDS or introduce this framing because the framing shapes how we develop things. So it's like people will keep on developing schools, but they could think of them through the frame of deliberately developmental spaces. So it's not like the industry create a new kind of space, but it could inform also existing institutions. So how do we start disseminating this idea and vision and having more of these kind of particularly, I'd say the strong form of these spaces and new kinds of experimental or innovative spaces doing this. And that then is like the field building idea. There's the field building. There kind of having more people calm There having there kind of the network and so on And finally there a kind of wrap up of like what we learned in the course what have we done, and why, you know, maybe it's a point where I really come back to the second on ASOS white paper and say, okay, you know, delivery aerospace is a key part of like the how of how do we get to a new paradigm? There's all of this interested in new paradigm thinking. We're interested in it. But this is the key, the how that we set out here. BDS is in a strong form. You know, the strong version of them is… I think the metaphor maybe of Buddhist monasticism and my… mindfulness might be good. There's a general perspective on life, which includes mindfulness, which can then inform schools, can inform mindful eating, can inform mindful business. And then there's the monasteries, which are like the strong version where you're kind of intensively cultivating and practicing in that tradition and informed by that. And similarly, so we can kind of see DDSs as a frame and like an idea. And they add. And they add. And as a, you know, when actually instantiated as like the strong version, they're actually the spaces like monasteries where, you know, in it, like intensive inner development, this kind of cultural evolution is being cultivated in an intensive, maybe experimental, theory and form, multidimensional, etc. way. So that's a good kind of closing point in how we kind of think of the concept. concept of deliberately developmental spaces. Okay.