How do we develop the enormous potential of young people who want to make a positive difference in society? It won’t be enough to use pedagogical approaches from the past. We can and should reinvent learning, to more fully engage the passion and the creativity of the young, and connect learning to action. That’s what this book is about. And it is why this book matters, for we cannot afford to underinvest in the talent that will make the world a better place.
Dan LeClair, Executive VP and COO, AACSB
Isabel’s book provides valuable insights into how teaching, learning, and development need to be rethought for engaging learners in the 21st century. It is itself a compelling story line.
Lyle Yorks, Professor of Adult and Continuing Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Whilst many wait for the world to magically auto-integrate values of sustainability, Rimanoczy embraces her pioneer status and provides examples where innovative learning experiences have been designed and crazy ideas have been attempted. Right here is a book of kindness that could save us from falling into repetitive issues. We must take it as a call to action and start transforming the definition of learning itself. Stop Teaching calls on “teachers” and students to understand that the sustainability mindset is simply about focusing on the knowing, doing, and, most importantly, the being. Amongst others, inclusive, participatory and inspiring methodologies should replace the corruptive, divisive, and individualistic technique of solely grading.
“The show,” certainly, “needs to be run together.” We must realize that to attain a world where true leaders drive and strive, we have to treat education as a journey to fully be engulfed in, with mind and body, a journey of self-development, which we collectively create and own. It is time to embrace the “stop teaching” revolution and no one can be left behind because, as Rimanoczy well deducts, students are capable of owning their educational experiences, they just require a redefined “teacher” status— one that supports and mentors.
Anita Negri, President Oikos International, Geneva, Switzerland
In clear and accessible language, peppered with vivid vignettes of real-life teachers, Isabel Rimanoczy envisages what it looks like when educators and trainers put aside notions of teaching to focus on learning. This is a must-read for anyone interested in actively and holistically engaging learners.
Stephen Brookfield, John Ireland Endowed Chair, University of St. Thomas, Minnesota
Isabel Rimanoczy offers a practical guide to educating future business leaders who want to make a difference. Her revolutionary approach helps management educators strengthen new capabilities in students who want jobs with greater purpose. Rather than top-down presenting of data and analysis, Rimanoczy suggests that educators become learning facilitators and engage students in grass-root activities that generate new levels of creativity and collaboration aimed at business and world benefit. Her book offers a valuable learning methodology to engage young people’s passion for work that is not only financially rewarding but also personally and socially meaningful.
Chris Laszlo, PhD, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Case Western Reserve University
Stop Teaching: A long awaited book on the inspiring new principles of management education. This book should be a “must read” for every business school faculty. The approach offered will immerse students in the sustainable mindset through management education. It is my high hope that our business school institutions would all support this new value-based, purposeful management education approach. And the time is now, since Mother Earth and our world civilization is at stake!
Amelia Indrajaya Januar, Faculty of IPMI International Business School, Jakarta, Indonesia
Today, innovative teaching practices have become a hot button issue for teachers, learners, and policy-makers in a community. “StopTeaching” attempts to raise our awareness of how to deliver teaching to our Apps generation—maintain interaction and create a platform to engage learners—and how to create an on-going dialogue and reflect on ways to learn. Isabel’s book is a call to teachers, students, and involved stakeholders that change is needed for self-awareness and interconnectedness, for curriculum redesign and, the most important of all, for developing sustainable skills with a positive mindset for sustainability.
I hope this book not only gives us food for thought, but also soul for re-engineering in the pathway of building a knowledgeable society.
Dr Shirley MC Yeung, Director, Centre for Corporate Sustainability and Innovations (CCSI) Hang Seng Management College, Hong Kong
This book is just as relevant to leaders in general as it is to educators. It is just as much a book about leadership as it is about learning. One of the most important roles of a leader is to facilitate learning.
Stop Teaching should be required reading for anyone in a leadership role, or anyone who wants to move from a power position to one of personal authority. Most leaders spend the majority of their time in meetings. The concepts and suggestions in Isabel’s book would make a big difference in executive boardrooms as well as in more everyday work meetings.
Lennart Rohlin, Founder and CEO, MiLgårdarna AB, Sweden
This book was developed through the insights and multivariate experiences of the author’s educational and global journey and the practical advice is offered in a captivating way. It is an impassioned guide for transforming the way management education and higher education needs to change to meet the needs of new students and accelerate the change we wish to see and provides a holistic view of systems thinking and planetary challenges. The resource material is carefully backed by data and insights from research, colleagues, business leaders, CEOs, and other educators and coaches. Stop Teaching serves to reenergize educators to not only make a difference in the lives and learning of future leaders, it tells us how to do so.
Jeanne E. Bitterman, EdD, Core Faculty of Adult and Organizational Learning Teachers College, Columbia University
Stop Teaching is a thoughtful, inspiring, and purposeful book in which the author seeks to raise issues and challenges to higher education in management education, and promotes change in teachers, students, and directors of business schools and universities.
Reading this book challenges us to move beyond our comfort zone and to ask: are we doing the right thing in our classrooms? Do we understand the local and global reality and prepare our students to be leaders? It reminds us that education needs to be “student centered”; they come to us not only to receive information but also to learn how to develop new ways of being, to know and to act, and this requires teachers to go beyond “teaching” to make way for new pedagogical approaches, materials, facilitation, and learning spaces. Our goal must be to encourage our students to take responsibility for their learning, self-reflect, discuss, think independently, and take risks.
Consuelo García de la Torre, PhD, Full Professor of Management and Marketing, EGADE Business School, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
Isabel Rimanoczy sums it up well with the title of this timely and important new book: Stop Teaching! In an interconnected world undergoing transformational social and environmental change, the old pedagogy of “lecture-test-rinse-repeat” is simply no longer up to the challenge. The age of the expert imparting wisdom to the masses is over. Tomorrow’s education must catalyze, engage, and promote action. This book not only makes the persuasive case for “why” but also shows us “how.”
Stuart L. Hart, Steven Grossman Endowed Chair in Sustainable Business, University of Vermont, and author of Capitalism at the Crossroads
“The most important thing when you breathe is not to inhale or exhale, but to move back and forth between the two. A responsible manager is someone who is able to breathe and move back and forth both in time and in space. Like any ‘conventional manager,’ that means being able to focus on the short-term view as well as few stakeholders (customers, management, or shareholders). A responsible manager, however, is someone who is also able to think about the long term and to think systemically by taking the whole ecosystem into account when making decisions. Business schools have been very successful at teaching the short term and restricted stakeholder vision, but ecological, social, and economic crises prove that we need to reinvent teaching and to instill a more holistic approach in our students. This book is here to help you to learn to inhale. It sheds light on a range of successful approaches that have been implemented in universities across the globe. It is a source of inspiration for all instructors prepared to step outside their comfort zone and into genuine student-centered learning.”
Jean-Christophe Carteron, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, KEDGE Business School, Developer of the Sustainability Literacy Test
Isabel Rimanoczy’s Stop Teaching presents an exceptional argument for reflexive pedagogy and more engaging classroom practices. As a potentially formative text for many educators, Stop Teaching helps its readership to step out from behind the podium and instead create active learning experiences for students, trainees, and employees. By proposing an active framework of knowing, being, and doing for learners, Rimanoczy encourages educators to shift their focus from reliance on expertise and the banking model of education to a simultaneous consideration of several learning preferences. A truly effective teacher embraces a wellrounded approach that includes not only disseminating information, but also articulating purpose, facilitating application, and discussing implications. No matter the subject area, Rimanoczy’s approach in Stop Teaching is gracefully applicable to educators who can—and should—learn how to set the stage and then get out of the way, encouraging learners to take charge of their own learning.
Molly J. Scanlon, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Writing and Communication, College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Nova Southeastern University
As a founder of Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI) and having experienced Action Reflection Learning (ARL) at MiL Institute in Sweden many years ago, I read Stop Teaching with recognition and familiarity.
ARL is placed in the midst of a huge question—“How can we develop in the most effective way a generation of responsible managers, who are able to take our civilization to an evolutionary breakthrough to shape a world that is sustainable, or even better, in terms of John Ehrenfeld, that is flourishing for all?”
Isabel Rimanoczy’s book places the ARL principles in a current context, and they definitely survive the test of being both relevant and appropriate—and much needed. The author’s detailed observations of the short-comings of many of today’s learning practices and arrangements, thoughts on future development and explicit examples of a variety of tools for facilitating genuine and responsible learning renders a rewarding read. The dialogue between the author and the four “learners” is intriguing and filled with connections, associations, reflections, and explanations.
The author is thankfully not alone in embracing these values and practices, but rather contributes to what a growing number of learning institutions are in the process of exploring and implementing. Thus, the book contributes to a development in motion—in need of further promotion, enhancement, and enlightenment; ultimately to support the shaping of a world where we all are able to develop to our full abilities and where we share responsibility for all of us, and the planet.
Professor Anders Aspling, Founding Secretary-General of the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI), Professor, School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
Stop Teaching not only challenges us to rethink business education in a world where expertise is accessible to anyone with a smart phone, but also provides instructors with a framework and pragmatic examples on how we can meet this challenge and develop responsible interconnected global leaders. This book gives new instructors and seasoned classroom veterans food for thought on how we conduct our classes and relate to our students. Anyone who cares about effective learning should read Stop Teaching. It will make you reflect on how you teach long after you read the final page.
Rita Shea-Van Fossen, PhD, Associate Professor of Management, H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Nova Southeastern University