Unlearning for Transformative Change: The Unlearning Mandala as a Comprehensive Theory and Meta-framework

This concept brief constitutes the first public release of the Unlearning Mandala framework — a multidimensional, meta-theoretical model developed through constructivist grounded theory research. In an era of compounding crises and systemic fragility, unlearning has emerged as a critical yet under-theorised capability for enabling sustainable, inclusive, and transformative change. Drawing from cross-sector insights and empirical interviews, the Unlearning Mandala maps how unlearning unfolds across personal, organisational, and societal contexts. It introduces a shared language for navigating both adaptive and adverse unlearning across four ways of seeing the world — Frame, Filter, Focus, and Fixedness — that shape how we know, think, and act. The framework outlines five pathways of unlearning and positions them within three contextual dimensions: layers, levels, and locus. Together, these components make the Mandala temporal, flexible, domain-agnostic, and adaptable across diverse and evolving contexts of change.The framework draws from interviews with transformative educators and thought leaders based in Singapore, Australia, the Philippines, Estonia, the United Kingdom, and Finland — highlighting its cross-cultural and interdisciplinary grounding.Note: This version updates the definition of unlearning, now articulated as the recalibration, release, reconfiguration, and/or reconstruction of what is adopted, internalised, or normalised. This also replaces the phrase “ways of seeing the world” with “systems of seeing the world,” and clarifies the contextual and temporal nature of unlearning. It supersedes a previous version published at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15285927.