The role of organizations in societal development has been a significant topic area since Max Weber's (1922) work regarding the connection between bureaucratization and societal rationalization. At the same time, the question of the role of societal developments for organizations (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), such as the increasing importance of diversity (Gardenswartz & Rowe, 1998; Dietz, 2007) in modern societies, plays an equally relevant role for organizational education research, which is interested in organizational learning, learning processes in, of, and between organizations (Göhlich et al., 2018). The presentations within the symposium are about questions like how diversity is understood in various organizations, how it can be encountered, and to what extent educational processes can be connected to or evoked by experiences of diversity. The symposium will focus on comparative, didactic, and methodological discussions regarding educational organizations such as schools, universities, and the temporary organization of Innovation Labs.

The first contribution presents a study focusing on a type of alternative education in China, i.e., Innovative Schools, that parents have chosen for their children as a substitute for the mainstream education the state provides. Diversity is addressed here in the sense that these schools provide an individualized education for children from middle-class families, thus offering an alternative to mainstream schools and their overwhelming emphasis on mechanical learning, discipline, and competition. However, the pursuit of diversity does not indicate a total separation from the mainstream script but rather connotes multiple (dis)connections between the alternative education space and mainstream schools. In that sense, the diversity of organizations (Tacke & Drepper, 2018) — here, the diversity of schools — is carefully negotiated in the Chinese context.

The second contribution also addresses the organizational space of schools (Rosenbusch & Huber, 2017). It focuses on learning processes within and between organizations. Diversity becomes relevant in the sense that the learning diversity of students, which has been affected by Corona, becomes the starting point, or at least the desiderata, for organizational educational learning processes. The presentation addresses learning processes within multi-professional teams and the importance of organizational-educational knowledge to address questions like staff diversity and how to prevent diversity approaches from turning into discrimination. 

After the symposium addressed the diversity of and within schools, the third contribution addresses the need for creating a space for students within teacher education to explore their existential questions, which can facilitate inner transformation and ultimately lead to system transformation. This requires a different, more indirect pedagogy (Ristiniemi et al., 2018; Saeverot, 2013) and teachers' willingness to be vulnerable and disclose themselves. The study, which will be presented, used a reflective, interactive design research framework to co-create design principles and teacher manuals for facilitating this exploration in a way that considers the diversity of teachers. It was essential to focus on giving teachers room for their interpretation in creating this space. In that sense, this contribution addresses organizational space for diversity.

The fourth contribution deals with innovation labs as a space for diversity and education through diversity. A program is presented in which innovation labs have been conducted with regional stakeholders to promote sustainable development. The diversity of participants is recognized as a crucial aspect of an ‘innovative learning’ (Heidelmann et al., 2023/forthcoming) and innovation process and as an initial impulse for transformative educational processes (Koller, 2012). The article presents findings of a longitudinal study, which shows that regional stakeholders deal with the difference between contradictory positions and discourses in a dialogical way, thereby creating a unique experience. Here, innovation labs offer the potential to be a ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 2003) in which contradictionary discourses (Lyotard, 1994) can be articulated and brought together.

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