Metachangemaking: An interdisciplinary synthesis of research on cultivating changemakers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Metachangemaking refers to the cultivation of changemakers—people with the motivation and competence to tackle societal issues and promote collective wellbeing. It is not entirely clear how to effectively cultivate changemakers, and relevant research spans many disparate fields. The goals of this article are to introduce the concept of metachangemaking, synthesize and evaluate some relevant literature which may be less familiar to particular audiences, and identify open questions for future research. We identified a number of themes, including changemaker motivations and competencies, approaches to cultivating such motivations and competencies, and opportunities and challenges for metachangemaking in education systems. There are many important outstanding questions that suggest directions for future research, such as the efficacy of various approaches to cultivating changemaker motivations and competencies in particular circumstances. There is a need for evidence-based theoretical frameworks of metachangemaking, and for studies that address issues of replicability, causality, and transferability to various changemaking contexts.