Transformative Learning and Adult Higher Education E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B TL Single Issue Teaching and Learning
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 222

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Presenting current trends in transformative learning and adult higher education, this volume paints a vivid picture of the Transformative Learning theory in action. The concepts that knit these articles together despite the variety of educational settings and populations are: relationships, community, and the body experience--often missing in higher education. This volume includes: * the voices of marginalized populations often excluded from research studies such as community college students, emerging adults with learning differences, English language learners, native Alaskans, African-American health educators, doctoral students, and yoga practitioners; * new paradigms for thinking about adult undergraduate education; * new ways to deal with social conflict and advise doctoral students; and * personal stories from Black women leaders, college teachers, student writers as well as pregnant women, and social service providers. This is the 147th volume of this Jossey-Bass higher education series. It offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques for improving college teaching based on the experience of seasoned instructors and the latest findings of educational and psychological researchers.

Leseprobe

New Directions for Teaching and Learning

Catherine M. Wehlburg EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Transformative Learning and Adult Higher Education

Judith Beth Cohen Jo Ann Gammel Amy Rutstein-Riley EDITORS

Number 147 • Fall 2016

Jossey-Bass

San Francisco

TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING AND ADULT HIGHER EDUCATIONJudith Beth Cohen, Jo Ann Gammel, Amy Rutstein-Riley (eds.) New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 147Catherine M. Wehlburg, Editor‐in‐Chief

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From the Series Editor

About This Publication

Since 1980, New Directions for Teaching and Learning (NDTL) has brought a unique blend of theory, research, and practice to leaders in postsecondary education. NDTL sourcebooks strive not only for solid substance but also for timeliness, compactness, and accessibility.

The series has four goals: to inform readers about current and future directions in teaching and learning in postsecondary education, to illuminate the context that shapes these new directions, to illustrate these new direction through examples from real settings, and to propose ways in which these new directions can be incorporated into still other settings.

This publication reflects the view that teaching deserves respect as a high form of scholarship. We believe that significant scholarship is conducted not only by researchers who report results of empirical investigations but also by practitioners who share disciplinary reflections about teaching. Contributors to NDTL approach questions of teaching and learning as seriously as they approach substantive questions in their own disciplines, and they deal not only with pedagogical issues but also with the intellectual and social context in which these issues arise. Authors deal on the one hand with theory and research and on the other with practice, and they translate from research and theory to practice and back again.

About This Volume

Transformative learning is described in this volume as a “rich metaphor” for exploring the interactions and experiences of students and faculty in higher education. The authors of these 11 chapters most certainly provide many examples of the richness of transformative learning on the lives and the learning of students in a range of educational settings and informal interactions.

Catherine M. WehlburgEditor in Chief

Catherine M. Wehlburg

is the associate provost for institutional effectiveness at Texas Christian University.

CONTENTS

Editors' Notes

References

1: The Spiral Road of Transformative Learning: Through the Lens of College Students with Learning Differences

Theoretical Grounding

Transformative Learning Applied to College Students with Learning Differences

Concluding Thoughts

References

2: Transformative Learning and the Road to Maternal Leadership

References

3: A Relational Approach to Mentoring Women Doctoral Students

Relational Mentoring

Transformative Learning

Methodology

Sample

Findings

Conclusions

References

4: Examining Transformation on the Road to the Professoriate

Contribution of the Study

Description of Participants and Critical Event Contexts

Narrative Critical Event Approach

Graham's Story: From Either-Or to Both-And

Marie's Story: Negotiating Lived Experience in a Space of Privilege

Situating the Stories

Implications for Transformative Learning

References

5: Whose Job Is It to Change?

Transformative Learning and Organizational Change

The Study, Institutional Context, and Participant Identities

The Results

Fostering Transformational Learning and Organizational Change Together

References

6: Making Voices Visible: Using Visual Data in Teacher Education and Research

Teacher Research and Documentation

Teacher Voices and Images

Making Teaching and Learning Visible

Questioning Assumptions and Practice

Implications for Research and Practice

References

7: Teaching Creative Nonfiction: The Transformative Nature of the Workshop Method

Introduction

Participants, Methodology, and Data Analysis

The Workshop as Transformational Learning

Teacher's Observations

Emotional and Identity-Based Insight

Cognitive Shifts

Conclusion and Recommendation

References

8: Transformative Graduate Education Through the Use of Restorative Practices

Introduction

Restorative Practices Theory

Adult Learning Theory

Teaching for Transformation

Evidence of Transformative Learning—Perspectives of Participants

Reconciliation of Past Personal Conflicts and Trauma

Conclusion

References

9: Adult Learning, Transformative Education, and Indigenous Epistemology

Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Yup'ik Context

Context: Historical Trauma

Context: Colonial Education and Alaska Natives

Rural Human Service Program: Context and Design

Conclusion

References

10: Iyengar Yoga for Motherhood: Teaching Transformation in a Nonformal Learning Environment

Nonformal Learning

Iyengar Yoga

Transformative Learning Theories and Yoga Pedagogy

Iyengar Yoga for Pregnancy

Observing Transformation

Discussion

Conclusion

References

11: Embodying Authenticity in Higher Education

Introduction

Rejecting the Body

The Body of Leisure

Embodying Difference

Discussion

References

Order Form

Advert

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 8

Figure 8.1

Social Discipline Window

Guide

Cover

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Editors' Notes

When educators talk about the transformative power of learning, they may have different definitions in mind. Some imagine their student's development to unfold progressively just as a caterpiller becomes a butterfly. Others may envision Shaw's Pygmalion (or its modern version, My Fair Lady), in which the tutor molds the uneducated flower seller into a sophisticated woman. The Theory of Transformative Learning developed by Jack Mezirow and his colleagues at Teacher's College Columbia has been influential for over 40 years. His research and his theory, based on a population of women returning to college in the 1970s, has been elaborated, critiqued, and applied in the United States, internationally, and in various disciplines (Cranton and Taylor 2012). Based on a democratic egalitarian premise and a firm belief in rational discourse, the theory posits that students, given the opportunity, will examine their long-held assumptions, reflect critically upon them, and then change their behavior to correspond to their revised perspectives. Optimistically, this transformation leads students to more inclusive, less rigid views, more flexible habits of mind, and actions that promote positive personal and/or social change (Mezirow 2000).

Critics of transformative learning have stimulated rich debates about its assumptions, as well as its supporting body of research (Newman 2014). Some challenge that claims of student transformation attribute too much power to the teacher, which could be viewed as a form of educational imperialism (Brookfield 2004). Others point out that deeply held attitudes are emotion-based and resistant to change (Dirkx 2001). Critics also argue that a holisitic view of humans should include a spiritual dimension, missing from most learning environments (Tisdell 2003). Social theorists fault transformative learning theory for being too individualistic since personal change cannot be understood as separate from the socio-cultural context (Tisdell 2003). Assuming transformation to be possible, we can ask: What is changed—one's identity, consciousness, perspective, behavior, or all of these (Newman 2014)? Furthermore, we question whether instrumental learning such as carpentry or cooking can be considered transformational for the student. Finally, many wonder if what we are calling “transformational learning” is simply “good learning” (Newman 2012).

Disputatious commentators call attention to the potentially dark side of transformation. In literature, Kafka's Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself transformed into a cockroach, an embodied expression of his lack of self-regard. Popular culture is full of humans becoming zombies or vampires and such transformations surely reveal our collective fears. In the current political climate transformation can also mean destruction, as noted by those who have studied suicide bombers and militant Islamists (Wilner and Dubouloz 2011).

As editors of this volume we have struggled with all of these provocative questions, but ultimately we find transformational learning to be a rich metaphor (Howie and Bagnall 2013) for examining the experiences of students and faculty in formal and nonformal educational settings. The following 11 chapters all refer to transformative learning in some manner. Despite challenges to definitions and interpretations, these studies based on research and practice in formal higher education and nonformal post secondary settings help define what we mean when we talk about transformative learning. Rather than theorize in a vacuum, these authors lead us to walk the walk by showing what is being done in classrooms and communities with diverse populations. For our contributors, theory and action come together. Six are studies carried out by working educators in their own settings. Three of these queried populations that did not include their own students. Though some researchers question “backyard studies,” we consider the trust and intimacy afforded to outweigh often false claims of objectivity. Three other researchers solicited participants from outside their own institutions.

The concepts that knit these articles together despite the variety of educational settings and populations involved are: relationships, community, and the body. The importance of family relationships in the transformative learning process stands out in Abrahams’ study of college students with identified learning differences. In her portraiture study of three African American alternative health educators, Panton learned about the importance of maternal figures to the development of her subjects. The transformative learning potential in the doctoral student/mentor relationship is explored in Gammel and Rutstein-Riley's work. For both Benoit and Nielsen, relationships or the absence of relationships with peers and faculty and the resultant isolation and invisibility impacted the students and educators in their studies.

That a peer group or learning community facilitates individual transformation becomes clear in Murphy's study of eight community college students who share and discuss their visual evidence in a research course. Cope shows how writers learn to hone their craft through feedback given in peer workshops. In a restorative justice graduate program, Adamson and Bailie demonstrate how the use of circles allows participants to be heard and models a new way to deal with conflict. In her degree program for native Alaskans, McEachern includes community elders whose participation creates a safe atmosphere for students to reflect on, process, and revise their beliefs. For Tate, both the body and the group are central as pregnant women in a yoga community get peer support for questioning medical advice. Finally, Douglass finds that attention to the physical bodies of students, teachers, and college administrators is crucial if learning is to affect the whole person. These articles suggest new paradigms for thinking about undergraduate education, graduate study, doctoral work, and nonformal adult learning. They offer rich ideas for those interested in further research on transformative learning.

Judith Beth Cohen, Jo Ann Gammel, Amy Rutstein-Riley

References

Brookfield, Stephen. 2004.

The Power of Critical Theory: Liberating Adult Learning and Teaching

. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cranton, Patricia, and Edward W. Taylor, eds. 2012.

The Handbook of Transformative Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice

. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Dirkx, John. 2001. “The Power of Feelings: Emotion, Imagination and the Construction of Meaning in Adult Learning.” In

The New Update on Adult Learning Theory

, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, no. 89, edited by S. B. Merriam. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Howie, Peter, and Richard Bagnall. 2013. “A Beautiful Metaphor: Transformative Learning Theory.”

International Journal of Lifelong Education

32(6): 816–836.

Mezirow, Jack. 2000. “Learning to Think Like an Adult: Core Concepts of Transformation Theory.” In

Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress

, edited by J. Mezirow and Associates, 3–34. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Newman, Michael. 2012. Calling Transformative Learning into Question: Some Mutinous Thoughts.

Adult Education Quarterly

62(1): 36–55. doi:10.1177/0741713610392768.

Newman, Michael. 2014. “Transformative Learning: Mutinous Thoughts Revisited.”

Adult Education Quarterly

64(4): 345–355.

Tisdell, Elizabeth. 2003.

Exploring Spirituality and Culture in Adult and Higher Education

. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wilner, Alex S., and Claire-Jehanne Dubouloz. 2011. “Transformative Radicalization: Applying Learning Theory to Islamist Radicalization.”

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism

34(5): 418–438.

Judith Beth Cohen, PhD

,

is a writer, yoga instructor, former graduate program coordinator, and professor emerita at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.

Jo Ann Gammel, EdD

,

is the director of the Ed.D. in educational Leadership: higher education program in the Van Loan School at Endicott College.

Amy Rutstein-Riley, Ph.D., M.P.H.

is the dean of faculty and associate professor of Sociology at Lesley University.

1

This chapter explores how college students with diagnosed learning differences develop identity within changing relationships with the family system. Implications highlight the crucial roles of context and relationship in transformative learning.

The Spiral Road of Transformative Learning: Through the Lens of College Students with Learning Differences

Lynn Abrahams

I have really smart friends

I wasn’t

I didn’t

I would just sit there

This is the voice of Sarah. She is a senior at a four-year liberal arts college who is about to graduate with a degree in Communication, and she is all too conscious of the fact that she struggles with dyslexia, a language-based learning disability. Until she arrived from California at this school in Massachusetts, she described herself as not fitting in anywhere—not with her friends, not with her fellow students, not even with her family. As she worked her way through Curry College's Program for Advancement of Learning (PAL), a program specifically designed to support college-able students with learning differences, I watched her develop her own voice. How, I wondered to myself, was she finding the inner resources to develop her separate identity and gain confidence in herself?

What I was watching was Sarah's own evolution of transformative learning, a developmental process articulated by Jack Mezirow (Mezirow et al. 2000) and discussed widely as a foundation for much of adult education. Transformative learning is a highly useful model, one that I find relevant in my work with college students in Curry's PAL program. However, the multiple theoretical discussions of transformational learning thus far in the literature have not fully accounted for the particular path of transformation I have witnessed within the student population with which I work: emerging adults in higher education who have had to accommodate the challenges faced by their particular learning differences, such as dyslexia, nonverbal learning disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or executive function disabilities.

In this chapter, I discuss some of the ways in which the concept of transformative learning has helped me to understand my students’ developmental trajectories. I highlight areas in which I believe the model might need to be expanded to fully comprehend all members of a diverse student population. In particular, I urge a greater emphasis on the context in which learning takes place, including the relationships that change during that process; and I describe a somewhat different model for the kind of self-reflection that I have witnessed students undertake in relationship to their family context.

Theoretical Grounding

Three theoretical orientations are particularly helpful in informing both our knowledge of the development of students in higher education and our view of transformative learning in this context: the concepts of Emerging Adulthood (Arnett 2000, 2004; Arnett and Tanner 2006), Self-Authorship (Baxter Magolda 2001, 2007, 2009, 2010), and Voice (Belenky et al. 1997; Gilligan 1993; Gilligan et al. 2003).

The term emerging adulthood entered the literature in the year 2000 in an article written by Jeffrey Arnett for American Psychologist. Arnett argued that emerging adults—those who fall between the ages of 18 and 28—are neither adolescents nor adults. They are in a distinct developmental stage that falls between the two. Within the context of life-span theory, Jennifer Tanner (2006) proposes that emerging adulthood not only represents a specific stage of development, it represents a crucial turning point in one's life. She agrees with Arnett's (2004) contention that it is during emerging adulthood that identity exploration is most salient. At this point in the life span, she suggests, a shift occurs that she calls recentering. “Recentering constitutes a shift in power, agency, responsibility, and dependence, between emerging adults and their social contexts—primarily experienced by emerging adults as a period during which parent regulation is replaced with self-regulation” (27).

In a similar manner, Marcia Baxter Magolda uses the term self-authorship to describe the developmental surge that Tanner refers to as recentering (Baxter Magolda 2001, 2009, 2010; Baxter Magolda and King 2004). Baxter Magolda defines self-authorship as the shift from relying on external voices to developing and trusting an internal voice. This is a term that was first used by Robert Kegan (1994). He described it as the creation of an internal identity that coordinates “values, beliefs, convictions, generalizations, ideals, abstractions [and] interpersonal loyalties” (185). Both Kegan and Magolda use this term to emphasize the active role that individuals take in creating their own identity.

The four stages of self-authorship describe a developmental journey that begins at a stage of external formulas, when an individual looks primarily to parents, teachers, and other authority figures to decide what to believe in. The second stage, which Baxter Magolda calls standing at the crossroads, occurs when the individual has experienced some dissonance and begins to question and examine beliefs, relationships, or sense of identity. The third stage, becoming the author of one's life, occurs when the individual begins to make decisions by listening to a growing internal voice. In the fourth and last stage, called internal foundations, the individual begins to develop the confidence to listen to and rely on that strengthening internal voice.

The process of self-authorship involves what Jeffrey Arnett calls the search for identity (internal voice) and a definition of growing into adulthood that involves owning or taking responsibility for one's self. Interestingly, this development is triggered by what Pizzolato (2003, 2007) calls “provocative experiences,” Baxter Magolda (2001, 2009) and Baxter Magolda and King (2004,) call “disequilibrium,” and Mezirow et al. (2000) call a “disorienting dilemma.” This is the first step in the transformative learning process.

The term voice is well suited to describe the search for authentic identity in which most emerging adults are engaged. In her seminal work Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (Belenky et al. 1997), the metaphor of voice emerged from the data as a pivotal construct. Women tended to describe their lives in terms of voice and silence: “speaking up,” “speaking out,” “not being heard,” “saying what you mean,” or “having no words” (18). This is a particularly useful construct to apply to the population of college students with language-based learning issues, which is a population set apart, one that is identified by the educational system for what it lacks.

The three theoretical orientations of Emerging Adulthood/Recentering, Self-authorship, and Voice all resonate with the psycho-developmental view of transformative learning, which views transformative learning as a continuous, incremental, and progressive growth that continues over the life span (Taylor 2008). It is important to note that each of these three theoretical threads emphasizes change in relation to context. Students who are recentering are shifting from the context of their birth family into a new family context; students engaged in self-authorship are developing a voice rooted inside themselves rather than on external authorities; and the feminist view of voice is rooted in growth in the midst of a relationship.

Transformative Learning Applied to College Students with Learning Differences

Context

Much of the discussion of personal transformation focuses on the individual as the unit of analysis. When discussing transformational learning in the classroom, it may make sense to focus on the student. However, when applying transformational learning theory to the huge shift in assumptions about self that I have noticed in my students, we can learn more when we look at the individual within context.

To do so, I designed a case study research project. I interviewed six students with diagnoses of dyslexia, all of whom attend a four-year liberal arts college. I asked each to tell me their story describing what they remembered about four critical time periods: when they were first diagnosed with a learning difference; when they decided to go to college; when they made the transition to college; and when they decided on a college major. Then I asked each student to volunteer a close family member whom I could also interview about those same time periods.

Remarkably, each of the six students I studied remained connected with family members as they advanced and discovered they were capable of completing a college degree. Yet, even while they stayed connected, they demonstrated an oscillating change in the nature of their relationship: a pulling-away, then a movement closer, then movement away again—a process that resembled an upward spiral. As Daloz (1999) writes, “Development seems to happen not in a gradual and linear way but in distinct and recognizable leaps—in a series of spiraling plateaus rather than a smooth slope” (23). These leaps were particularly noticeable when I studied these students within the context of their family relationships.

Ricky is a biracial student who has two white mothers and a black younger sister. He is devoted to his younger sister and very close to both parents. Ricky struggled during his first year at college, and after being on probation for one semester, he was required to earn a specific grade point average in order to be allowed back the next semester. He missed that GPA by a mere 0.5. I took my discussion with him and turned it into an “I Poem,” the qualitative data analysis method developed by Gilligan et al. (2003), and the result was revealing:

I’m driving back home from the gym

I was like “What are you talking about?”

I read it and it said that I’m being dismissed

I just collapsed to the floor

I was so confused

I get a phone call

I got back in

I thanked them, like 12 thousand times

I was tearing up

I was like, “I got to move back!”

I have a 9-year-old sister

What was I going to say to her?

“I failed?”

I can't do that to her.

By describing the impact his being dismissed from college would have on his sister, Ricky clearly articulates his reaction to this situation. When I interviewed both his mothers (Ricky is the only one who wanted me to speak to more than one parent), they both commented that they were impressed by how upset he was at the possibility of not being able to return to school. They took that reaction to be a sign that Ricky was growing into himself as an autonomous learner.

Relationship

Relationship plays a clear role in transformative learning. I watched each of these six students, during their college years, shift their locus of support away from one parent (typically the one most involved in the early years of schooling) and toward either the other parent or some other influential adult. The fact that family constellations can be so very different seems to have very little impact. Consider, for example, the following two students whose families (both “nontraditional,” if such a concept even has meaning in a time of rapidly shifting family constellations) look quite different, yet for both of whom the pattern appears clearly.

Isabella grew up in an apartment alone with her mother, who had not gone to college, and had no memory of her father. Right before she entered college, she had a huge fight with her mother and moved in with her boyfriend and his family. During the years of shifting identity, it was her boyfriend's mother she drew on for support. It was as if the shift of relationship highlighted the shift she was going through in her development.

Ricky coming from a family of two moms also went through a shift. During the early years, he drew support from his biological mother, who was always there when he ran into trouble in school. But when he entered college, he seemed to shift to his other mom because he felt that she understood the college environment better.

Critical Reflection