The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating—but What was the Pudding in the First Place? A Proven Unconferencing Approach in Search of Its Theoretical Foundations

Abstract

This article outlines how unconferencing contributes to the vision of a performative social science that aims at stimulating social change. The authors argue that conference participation is an integral part of research and has the potential to support social change by enabling learning processes. They then develop an unconferencing model from the theoretical reflection of different theories from social science which reveals that unconferences support individual and social learning processes through enabling knowledge transformation as well as through creating structural links between societal sub systems. Using the example of an elaborated unconferencing concept called UnBla (i.e., to remove the blah-blah) which has proven to work well, the authors explain how the theoretical principles of unconferencing are applied in reality and what the outcomes of unconferences can be. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802614