Shifting Seasons: Reflection, Implementation & Events
Join our upcoming Transition Makers Toolbox community event in May!
Welcome to a new year for inner development in education! In this newsletter, we look back on a vibrant year and share what’s ahead: new events, updates from the field, and a published response to the national debate on inner development in higher education.
In this newsletter you will find:
🔙 Reflect on 2025
🧭 Discover the IDG Guide 2.0
🌱 Inspiration: IDGs at the institutional level
🚀 Update from Empowered Minds (UvA)
📰 From the press: Inner development in higher education
🧠 Meet 2 Transition Makers
🫂 Meet the new Toolbox coordinators
🛤️ Inspire yourself with upcoming events
Read more below ⤵
Waiting for restock: Inner Development Conversation Starters
Connect on a deeper level with yourself and others with the Inner Development Conversation Starters, designed to inspire reflection and dialogue.
Note: due to a transition to a new publisher, it’s currently not possible to order new sets of the Inner Development Conversation Starters. We’re working on a solution and will keep you posted!
Join our LinkedIn community to become a member of the IDG Higher Education Hub and learn, innovate, practice and share the application of tools or share stories, recordings of lectures, event designs and presentations with other Transition Makers.
Looking Back at Previous Events
In the second half of 2025, several inspiring events took place around the theme of the Inner Development Goals. Thank you for being part of this community!
We want to continue this inspiring community in 2026 and ask your input for the next community event on May 11th, 2026:
*Transition Makers Toolbox Wrap-up Event
On September 16th 2025, 40 Transition Makers gathered for our Wrap-up Event! We are looking back at a successful afternoon with five inspiring talks and sharing experiences, questions, and ideas.
This event marked a special moment: with two tools per Inner Development Goal (IDG) now live on the website, the co-creation phase of the Transition Makers Toolbox has come to a close. We’re now shifting focus.
*Publication of IDG Guide 2.0
In September 2025, the IDG Framework was updated. This Inner Development Guide 2.0 identifies 25 skills across 5 dimensions. Five skills have changed or been replaced, and two have been added. The descriptions of the skills are also new. The Transition Makers Toolbox Team aims to incorporate these changes in the tools and website in the upcoming period.
*IDG’s in Education: Bridging Polarities
On October 15th and 16th 2025, the IDG Summit 2025: Bridging Polarities brought together the global IDG community, for two days of connection, reflection and inspiration. On Day 1 we joined the online Summit livestream with Stockholm, and on Day 2 we gathered with our Dutch community for the IDG in Education Summit, at Hogeschool Windesheim, Zwolle. A keynote presentation by Ilja Boor and Linda de Greef on the Empowered Minds project (UvA) and the Transition Makers Toolbox illustrated how the IDGs can come alive in classrooms through affective and transformative learning.
In Practice: Transitie Gericht Onderwijs (TGO)
The Hogeschool Van Hall Larenstein focuses on educating students to become experts in transition. They embraced the Sustainable Development Goals and put transition focused learning in their institutional plan. The result was Transition-Oriented Education (TGO, Dutch: Transitie Gericht Onderwijs). In their education, the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) form the set of transition skills that help to have meaningful conversations, understand complex situations and work in connection.
From the press: Meaningful learning asks for inner development
In November 2025, an opinion article was published in a Dutch newspaper about criticism on the increased focus on inner development in higher education. Educational developers from the University of Amsterdam (Empowered Minds project), Jasper ter Schegget, Ilja Boor and Linda de Greef, sent a response, which was subsequently published in the Volkskrant.
“The purpose of higher education is not to dictate to students how they should feel or who they should be. The focus on inner development is about something else: making visible what has long been part of effective learning. Students not only process knowledge, but also learn to relate to situations that are complex, uncertain or morally charged.”
Kick-off Special Interest Group Affective Learning at UvA
Within the Empowered Minds project at the University of Amsterdam, affective learning is more structurally embedded in existing degree programmes. On 1 December 2025, this took shape with the launch of the Special Interest Group (SIG) Affective Learning. The SIG brings together UvA educators who explore how attitudes, values, emotions and inner motivation can be integrated into teaching - a question central to many Transition Makers Toolbox tools.
The first session gathered teachers from across faculties and echoed a shared question that aligns with the Toolbox’s approach. The conversations made clear that these dimensions are essential for learning, especially in the context of complex societal challenges and uncertain futures. Stories ranged from empathy and imagination in interdisciplinary courses to redefining thesis supervision and statistics education with more attention to inner development.
The kick-off marked the start of the SIG Affective Education as a learning community that complements and enriches the Transition Makers Toolbox by deepening the pedagogical conversation behind its tools.
Meet the Transition Makers
“Exchanging Perspectives helps students understand that you don’t need to be an expert on everything; even input from laymen can be useful. Approaching a problem on your own rarely yields new approaches, beyond those you are already aware of. Bringing in new people always helps. It is time to listen to each other.
Whilst creating this tool, I worked for the Centre for Unusual Collaborations and as an integration expert for the Da Vinci Master course. Now, I work in the Interdisciplinary Education programme at Utrecht University. Exchanging Perspectives introduces students to new ways of working that open their attitudes to approaches that are not their own.”
“Check in. Speak up. Move forward. Through real listening and honest sharing, Team Check-in uses Nonviolent Communication to build trust, clear the air and strengthen collaboration within your team.
For twelve years, I worked in post-war Kosovo with youth and in higher education. Since moving to the Netherlands in 2013, I’ve been designing and facilitating learning experiences focused on leadership development, inner development, resiliency, peer coaching and assessment, relational intelligence, team dynamics, deep democracy and self-management. I also coordinate Windesheim’s four-year learning trajectory on Leadership and Inner Development.”
Meet the coordinators
The focus of the Transition Makers Toolbox is shifting: from co-creating tools to implementing them in education. With this shift, the coordination of the website has been handed over to new team members: Billy van Zoomeren and Evelien van der Linden!
“As coordinator of the Transition Makers Toolbox, I aim to create more connection in education - between students, teachers and disciplines. With a background in health, ethics and a passion for personal development, I like to explore how education can nurture who we are as people. I believe meaningful transitions in society start from within: when students learn to understand and connect with themselves, they can become the changemakers our world needs.”
“As a junior teacher and project coordinator for the Transition Makers Toolbox, I am motivated to connect students more deeply with themselves and with others while working on real-world problems. With a background in Biomedical Engineering, I aim to inspire students to use their critical thinking and creativity to improve and implement personalized medicine in our current healthcare system”
Evelien van der Linden - Junior teacher UMC Utrecht, EWUU alliance
Upcoming Inspiring Events
In the first half year of 2026 a lot of inspiring events are coming up, such as our own annual Transition Makers Toolbox Community Event. Read below for more details and get inspired!
*Save the Date: Transition Makers Toolbox Community Event 2026
To keep up the good energy of the Transition Makers Toolbox we want to meet up with the community! Save Monday May 11th in your agenda, more information will follow soon. We will work hands-on with the Toolbox and exchange our experiences from education in practice.
Date: May 11th 2026, 15:00-17:30h (networking and drinks from 17:00h)
Location: Playground, Universiteit Utrecht, Science Park
For whom: Transition Makers, colleagues, students or everyone else interested in the Transition Makers Toolbox and IDGs in education
*EWUU Alliance Conference 2026: Driving Transitions: In Society, With Society
This year’s conference explores the context of urgent societal transitions and invites the scientific community to reflect on its evolving role—not just as a knowledge provider, but as a partner in sustainable change. Together, we’ll examine the roles and tensions between key actors and rethink how the EWUU alliance can help shape more inclusive, future-oriented systems.
Date: Thursday April 16th 2026, 11.30h - 17.00h
Location: DomusDela, Eindhoven
For whom: Researchers, students, teachers, staff, policy members, and everyone who is interested.
*Groene Peper: sustainability event for education of the future
On Friday, May 22nd, 2026, Groene Peper returns to Eindhoven — the national sustainability event for future-focused education. It’s the only Dutch event where teachers, students, and sustainability coordinators from all educational levels come together to learn, share, and act.
Expect inspiring keynotes, hands-on workshops, a hackathon, and plenty of space to exchange ideas with peers from across the country.
Date: Friday May 22nd, 2026
Location: Eindhoven
Contact us
Do you have questions about the Transition Makers Toolbox? You can reach us at info@transitionmakers.nl. We are looking forward to hearing from you!