Leadership Education and Playful Pedagogy (LEaPP)

In today’s globally connected world, business leaders play important roles that can aid or worsen sustainable development. Effectively managing global pandemics, rising inequalities and environmental disasters require leaders to have more than technical knowledge of one’s business. Such challenges require holistic leadership skills to navigate complexity, weigh ethical dilemmas, and consider the social impacts of decisions. Historically, leadership education has its roots in developing individual, command-and-control decision-making skills. Given the myriad dynamic challenges in contemporary societies, developing effective leadership in businesses requires a new and different pedagogical approach.

The United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) has embarked upon a multi-year program to change how leaders-in-training can and should learn to approach these global problems. Their aim is to scale leadership development pedagogies that develop the skills necessary to navigate the complex systems and processes leaders are likely to encounter. Inspired by the pedagogical framework developed by the LEGO Foundation which advocates for developing playful learning through meaningful, actively engaging, iterative, social, and joyful experiences, PRME and Project Zero researchers will connect with business school educators in PRME’s global network to research, test, and institutionalize a holistic pedagogy that fosters responsible leadership and management.

The ultimate beneficiaries of the project are business school students at PRME signatory schools. More recently, PZ’s Pedagogy of Play project created similar k-12 pedagogical approaches and professional development programs based on cross-cultural research into the nature of playful learning and practices that develop iterative, joyful, and collaborative experiences.

If you are a current student at Harvard University and would like to be contacted when a work study position is posted for this project, please fill out this brief form.