A panel of Danish experts, including Professor Per Schultz and businessman Lars Kolind, devised a classification of skills from the point of view of the transition from an industrial society to a knowledge society. The panel identified four core skills:

Learning skills
The ability to learn technical knowledge and apply it in solving problems. To be able to learn to learn, to be able to learn alongside others and participate in cross-cultural learning processes. The ability to link knowledge, ability and skills. Keyword: reflexivity

Change skills
To master the adaptation to innovation, to be flexible and maintain an overview. To abandon out-dated perceptions and turn personal development into a lifestyle. Keyword: flexibility.

Relationship or social skills
The ability to work with others, to communicate, to build networks, to take responsibility along with others. To be able to place oneself in others’ position. Keyword: empathy.

Judgement skills
To be able to cope with values and ethical questions, to understand the intrapersonal, to deal with the known and the unknown and take an existential view of one’s own life. Keyword: personal responsibility.

At Oure, we have devised the following our own model with four categories of the core competencies our learning process develops:

Physical and sporting skills
We distinguish between physical and sporting skills. By physical skills we mean physical awareness, normal motorics, basic development and building up a the body schema. By sporting skills we mean the learning of particular patterns of motion, techniques and rules, as well as practical and theoretical competence regarding the body and sport. This includes natural science, psychology, sociology and aesthetics. These skills are learnt through a combination of physical, motoric and athletic learning and theoretical reflection.

Social and communicative skills
This is somewhat similar to the categories of social and change skills in the model previously describes. These relate to ethical discourse, democratic understanding, practical and theoretical insight into society, social systems and communication, empathy and social behaviour.

Personal skills
These are similar to the opinion skills in the model previously described. They concern intrapersonal skills and being able to cope with the subjective, the existential and the emotional. They also include the ability to combine theory and practice, and the cognitive. In terms of learning theory, they relate to cognitive, psychodynamic and existential learning, from psychological, existential and aesthetic perspectives.

Knowledge and theory skills
We strive to make sure that the students acquire theory and knowledge in the natural sciences, philosophy, sociology, psychology and pedagogy, aesthetics and music. As well as the personal importance of this, it is important for continued education and gaining qualifications.

What do we mean when we say that the college should be a learning organisation?

When we talk about creating a learning organisation and accomplishing organisational learning, the aim is to create a learning environment where everyone is involved in performing tasks and learning from the process. The goal is the personal development and qualifications of the individual students. This means developing abilities which enrich the lives of the individuals and which are also core skills for working in the knowledge society: social and communicative skills, systems thinking and learning to learn.

The college is a learning organisation in the sense that organisational learning takes place every day in all circumstances, whether or not the students and employees are aware of it. A residential college offers a very special, indeed unique, set of opportunities to “bring young people to learning, and leaning into the lives of young people”, as Ulla Ambrosius Madsen wrote in her book about continuation schools.
The fact that the students live closely together in shared houses for an extended period optimises the development of their social and communicative skills. The courses in themselves provide a meaningful experience which contributes to enhancing personal development, not least because of the strong emotional component involved in the social and sporting life. The emphasis on physical skills in such a close social environment only serves to reinforce this.

Current theories about learning organisations are not complete: developing them is a cross-disciplinary project, drawing on biology, psychology, pedagogy, sociology, ethics, cybernetics, theories of systems, organisations and information and so on. Not least important is the experience gleaned from the world of sport, where teamwork and performance are essential elements.

The concept of the learning organisation has received a lot of attention from managers and administrators, researchers and educationalists throughout the Western world in the last decade. As the industrial society morphs into the knowledge society, demanding the abilities to think systematically, to collaborate, to communicate, and not least to work across cultural borders, so social and communicative skills become ever more essential. The mechanical structure of the industrial society is changing to the organic structure of the knowledge society.

The Danish philosopher Ole Thyssen writes:
“An organisation is a social system, which, like other social systems, consists of communication, but unlike other social systems has decision-making as its central element …An organisation is a network of decisions which create new decisions in a network of decisions. Everything in an organisation is decided, or is assumed to be decided.”

Oure International College of Sports is just such a system, with numerous sub-systems, such as the houses where the students live, teams of instructors, administrative groups, practical staff etc. A conscious initiative can improve the way in which the organisation as a whole and the various sub-groups work with learning, sport and developing skills, and also make daily life more stimulating and challenging for both the students and the staff.

The book “Organizational Culture and Leadership” established Edgar H. Schein as one of the “founders” of organisational psychology. He starts from an understanding of the close relationship between concepts such as leadership, organisational culture, values, learning and change. To understand the dynamic processes of organisations, sub-cultures and national and ethnic cultures, it is necessary to be familiar with systems theory and cultural analysis.

In essence, his theory suggest three levels to an organisational culture:

• The overall norms, values and assumptions about the organisation. This includes the mission, goals and rules of the organisation.
• The structure of the organisation, the decision-making and communication system.
• Artefacts or symbols, such as their way of talking, the language they use, the physical framework and an aesthetic, or lack of it. The goal, as Schein sees it, is to ensure that all the different sub-cultures should address each other to stimulate the development of common goals, a common language and common guidelines with the aim of being able to solve problems.

If we apply this to Oure, all the staff who have a leadership role regarding the students must be able to participate in a process of continuous learning.
The employees who create the culture must be ready to act as guides and advisers in chaos, be aware of their unconscious reactions and have a realistic insight into themselves. They must also be able to analyse the processes of the organisational culture. They also must be ready and able to break with habitual and traditional thinking, as well as to create motivation, commitment and participation and be able to change cultural assumptions and learn to be part of a new culture.

Another key work in the theory of the learning organisation is “The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization” by Peter M. Senge. His perception of a learning organisation is built on an idealistic, almost naive, enthusiasm which is reminiscent of Rousseau’s vision of education. He believes that people’s innate desire to learn can help them to shake off old traditional and authoritarian concepts of organisation and the instrumental perception of work. The organisation itself has to be able to learn together as a whole. Senge sees this process as involving five disciplines.

Systems thinking
Understanding processes in a modern complex society, being able to see unity, connections, structures and patterns.

Personal mastery
Personal learning by the individuals within an organisation, leading to personal development and the ability to focus on concentrated effort.

Mental models
The cognitive, internal images and assumptions about reality that direct our actions, experience and emotions. This is a key concept in sports psychology too. If people are unaware of their mental models, or have negative mental models, then problems in the organisation will arise.

Building shared vision
Generative learning, seen as the ability to create, can only take place as a result of enthusiasm and strong vision. It is essential that there is a correspondence between the vision of the organisation and the visions of those within it.

Team learning
Nowhere is this more relevant than in the world of sports. Modern organisations need to promote team learning, where the strengths of the individuals create a higher unity, and create a common language for analysing complex reality.

For us at Oure, the creation of a learning organisation has three overall objectives:

• To make the residential college a learning environment where the students develop all-round and acquire key social and communicative skills.
• To develop the human and professional skills of the staff on the basis of a conscious and common action plan.
• That the college itself improves qualitatively so that it can survive and improve in a changing and competitive knowledge society.

The end – or a new beginning?

So we conclude our presentation of the values and philosophies which drive and inform Oure International College of Sports. We hope you can share them, and that the sometimes simplified explanations presented here of the ideas which have influenced us may stimulate you to learn more about them.

As we have mentioned several times, one of the biggest challenges we all face is constant change. This change will mean that our values and philosophies may also change. Some values will, we think, remain constant, and our aim will remain to help all who are involved with Oure International College of Sports to adapt to change as responsible world citizens, fit for the lives they choose to lead.