En utbildning i processledarskap avseende mångfald : utvärdering och aktionsforskning

Sammanfattning: With assistance from the European Social Fund, Mälardalen University started the JämBredd project to offer an education in equality and diversity issues. Part of this project has been education in Process Leadership. The aim was to design a skills enhancement Leadership course for creating processes of change in a multicultural working life. Schools, district courts, various municipal health care institutions, housing associations and universities have all requested knowledge about equality and diversity issues, in order to be able to create a better exchange of ideas both internally within organizations and externally in customer contacts. All participants have some form of leadership in their various activities. The professional roles of the 33 participants at the start of the education course were headmasters to preschool or school managers in various municipal administrations, personnel officers, gender instructors, lecturers, counselors, and administrators in various municipalities, counties and District Court. Process Leadership education was offered in nine so-called education modules over one year. The teaching methods varied with different approaches to in equality and diversity issues by researchers. Education modules were organized as full-day educational activities and located outside the university.The overall aim of the study is to identify learning and change processes related to equality and diversity issues among participants in the Process Leadership Education. Another aim is to develop an education model which can be used for skills enhancement in the areas of equality and diversity for different occupations? The questions are: How has participation in the education led to increased knowledge of equality and diversity issues? How has the education given participants increased knowledge that has contributed to a process of change regarding equality and diversity issues? What factors can be seen as important in the change process regarding equality and diversity issues? What conclusions can be drawn from the evaluation to contribute to the future development of process management training?The research strategy of this study has been Action research. The Action researcher has followed the learning process throughout a year and evaluated the program through observations, visual method, interviews and questionnaires. The results showed an understanding among the participants that they had attained increased knowledge about diversity that was mainly due to two factors: One reason was that the lecturers were knowledgeable researchers in various diversity issues and shared their own knowledge with the participants. The second reason was that there was plenty of time for reflection, reference reading and networking since the educational program spanned the entire year. The final result also indicated a training model that might be used to create a better understanding of diversity issues within various occupations. The result show consistent responses from the participants of the education, as described above, and can thus be said to be relevant to further education in equality and diversity issues. Through this education in process management, participants’ attained increased knowledge on the one hand and also on the other hand tools to drive processes that in turn can lead to employees with increasing knowledge about diversity issues.Keywords: process