Transformative Learning

1

• 5
• Transformative Learning
• 7
• Your critical incidents
• 9
• Transformative Learning
• One definition
• A view of its significance
• Mezirows stages
• Perspective transformation
• Forms of education
• Mezirow
• Levels of Reflection
• Questions
• www.dmupce.org.uk/transformative
• Single and double-loop learning
• Tension Field of Learning
• The Developmental agenda (Erikson)
• Perry scheme of development

• Resistance Factors
• Crisis
• Sequence of PSL 2
• De-stabilisation
• Disorientation
• Re-orientation
• Oscillating support in the Re-orientation stage
• Banking education
• Freire
• Hidden Curriculum
• What is taught, and what is learned
• Sending messages
• Discourse and Framing
• Labelling
• Mechanisms of adaptation (Piaget)
• Conceptions of learning (Saljo 1979)
• www.dmupce.org.uk/transformative

2
Transformative Learning

• 17 January 07
• www.bedspce.org.uk/adultlearning/

3
Your critical incidents

• Now that you have done your critical incident
  assignment
• What kinds of incident did you describe?

4
(No Transcript)
5
Transformative Learning

• Principally about yourself rather than an
  external subject
• so that you come to see yourself and your
  potential differently.

1 of 8
6
One definition

• "Transformative learning involves experiencing a
  deep, structural shift in the basic premises of
  thought, feelings, and actions. It is a shift of
  consciousness that dramatically and irreversibly
  alters our way of being in the world. Such a
  shift involves our understanding of ourselves and
  our self-locations our relationships with other
  humans and with the natural world our
  understanding of relations of power in
  interlocking structures of class, race and
  gender our body awarenesses, our visions of
  alternative approaches to living and our sense
  of possibilities for social justice and peace and
  personal joy."
• OSullivan (2003)

2 of 8
7
A view of its significance

• Perhaps even more central to adult learning than
  elaborating established meaning schemes is the
  process of reflecting back on prior learning to
  determine whether what we have learned is
  justified under present circumstances. This is a
  crucial learning process egregiously ignored by
  learning theorists.
• (Mezirow, 19905)

3 of 8
8
Mezirows stages

• A disorienting dilemma
• Self-examination with feelings of fear, anger,
  guilt, or shame
• A critical assessment of assumptions
• Recognition that ones discontent and the process
  of transformation are shared
• Exploration of options for new roles,
  relationships, and actions
• Planning a course of action
• Acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing
  ones plans
• Provisional trying of new roles
• Building competence and self-confidence in new
  roles and relationships
• A reintegration into ones life on the basis of
  conditions dictated by ones new perspective
• (Mezirow, 200022)

4 of 8
9
Perspective transformation

• "Perspective transformation is the process of
  becoming critically aware of how and why our
  presuppositions have come to constrain the way we
  perceive, understand, and feel about our world
  of reformulating these assumptions to permit a
  more inclusive, discriminating, permeable and
  integrative perspective and of making decisions
  or otherwise acting on these new understandings.
  More inclusive, discriminating permeable and
  integrative perspectives are superior
  perspectives that adults choose if they can
  because they are motivated to better understand
  the meaning of their experience." (Mezirow,
  199014 my emphasis)

5 of 8
10
Forms of education

• Transmissional
• Transactional
• Transformational

• Informational
• Transformational

Kegan, in Mezirow 2000
6 of 8
11
Mezirow
7 of 8
12
Levels of Reflection

• Content Reflection on the content or
  description of a problem. (Similar to Dewey on
  problem solving)
• Process Reflection about the strategies used to
  solve the problem rather than the content of the
  problem itself
• Premise Reflection questioning the relevance of
  the problem itselfunderlying assumptions,
  beliefs, or values. Distinct from problem-solving
  and can lead to transformative learning.
• Based on Cranton (1996)

8 of 8
13
Questions

• Is it always positive?
• Is the induction of transformative learning a
  legitimate task for the teacher of adults?
• Where is the social and political dimension?

? of ?
14
www.dmupce.org.uk/transformative
15
Single and double-loop learning
Match
Governing
Conseque
Actions
Mismatch
variables
nces
Argyris C (1992) On Organizational Learning
Oxford Basil Blackwell
1 of 1
16
Tension Field of Learning
Cognition
Emotion
Illeris (2002)
Society
1 of 1
17
The Developmental agenda(Erikson)
Ego-integrity vs. Despair
Maturity
Generativity vs. Stagnation
Adulthood
Intimacy vs. Isolation
Young adulthood
Identity vs. Role confusion
Puberty and adolescence
Industry vs. Inferiority
Latency
Initiative vs. Guilt
Locomotor-genital
Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
Muscular-anal
Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
Oral-sensory
1 of 1
18
Perry scheme of development

• Dualism
• Right/wrong
• Multiplicity
• Right, wrong, not yet known
• Contextual Relativism
• Everythings relative
• Commitment within Relativism
• Even so

• Positions rather than stages
• Nine stages, of which the major four are

Perry, W.G. (1999). Forms of Ethical and
Intellectual Development in the College Years.
San Francisco Jossey-Bass Publishers.
1 of 2
19
Womens ways of knowing

• Silence
• Received Knowledge
• Subjective Knowledge
• Procedural Knowledge
• Constructed KnowledgeBelenky, M.F., Clinchy,
  B.M., Goldberger, N.R., and Tarule, J.M. (1986)
  Women's Ways of Knowing. New York Basic Books.

2 of 2
20
Simple Supplantive Learning (SSL)

New learning
Competence
Time
1 of 1
21
Resistance Factors
The Present Space to change
1 of 1
9A
22
Crisis
1 of 5
23
Sequence of PSL 2
Re-orientation
2 of 5
24
De-stabilisation

• Unpredictable process
• Effected by casual remarks as much as deliberate
  intervention
• Has two necessary elements
• Declaration
• Application

3 of 5
25
Disorientation

• Has cognitive and affective components
• May include
• Depression
• Frustration
• Anger
• Guilt
• Attempted apathy (not denial)

4 of 5
26
Re-orientation

• Resembles additive learning
• New learning still fragile
• Diminishing echoes of whole sequence
• Facilitating environment still required in
  initial stages

5 of 5
27
Oscillating support inthe Re-orientation stage
Independence
Time
1 of 1
28
Banking education

• the teacher teaches and the students are taught
• the teacher knows everything and the students
  know nothing
• the teacher thinks and the students are thought
  about
• the teacher talks and the students listenmeekly
  
• the teacher disciplines and the students are
  disciplined
• the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and
  the students comply
• the teacher acts and the students have the
  illusion of acting through the action of the
  teacher
• the teacher chooses the program content, and the
  students (who were not consulted) adapt to it
• the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge
  with his own professional authority, which he
  sets in opposition to the freedom of the
  students
• the teacher is the Subject of the learning
  process, while the pupils are mere objects.

1 of 2
29
Freire

• This book will present some aspects of what the
  writer has termed the pedagogy of the
  oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with,
  not for, the oppressed (be they individuals or
  whole peoples) in the incessant struggle to
  regain their humanity.
• This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes
  objects of reflection by the oppressed,
• and from that reflection will come their
  necessary engagement in the struggle for their
  liberation.
• And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made
  and remade.
• From Freire P The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
  Penguin 197225

2 of 2
30
Hidden Curriculum

• What pupils/students learn from the sheer
  experience of participating in school/college
• largely about
• survival
• identity and worth
• irrespective of, and often contrary to, what
  the college sets out to teach.

1 of 5
31
What is taught,and what is learned
2 of 5
32
Sending messages

• All social practices have a sub-text, or send a
  message.
• usually about values and relationships
• There is no way to avoid these messages
• The only question is whether they are good
  messages or bad ones

3 of 5
33
Discourse andFraming

• The culture of the school/college, and its
  procedures, are geared to deal with
  pupils/students in two frames, with associated
  discourses
• academic intelligence, ability, application,
  performance in the educational game
• social/behavioural discipline, disruption,
  conformity to institutional rules

4 of 5
34
Labelling

• Children/students are perceived and reported on
  in terms of these frames
• and may internalise (believe) the judgements made
• and act up to them a self-fulfilling prophecy
• or not, of course.

5 of 5
35
Mechanisms ofadaptation(Piaget)
Assimilation
Accommodation
1 of 1
36
Conceptions of learning (Saljo 1979)

• 1 Learning as a quantitative increase in
  knowledge. Learning is acquiring information or
  knowing a lot  
• 2 Learning as memorising. Learning is storing
  information that can be reproduced. 
• 3 Learning as acquiring facts, skills and methods
  that can be retained and used as necessary. 
• 4 Learning as making sense or abstracting
  meaning. Learning involves relating parts of the
  subject matter to each other and to the real
  world. 
• 5 Learning as interpreting and understanding
  reality in a different way. Learning involves
  comprehending the world by re-interpreting
  knowledge

1 of 1
37
www.bedspce.org.uk/adultlearning/
38
(No Transcript)