scholarly journals A Case for Mezirow’s Transformative Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Rieswan Pangawira Kurnia
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Adult Learning ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Adult Educators ◽  
Transformative Learning Theory ◽  
Transformation Theory ◽  
Childhood Experience ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
The World

<p>Jack Mezirow’s transformative learning theory is one of the most referenced adult education theories. In his theories, transformative learning is the process of effecting change in a frame of reference, using structures of assumption to understand our experiences. Transformative learners move toward a frame of reference with more inclusive self-reflection and more integration of experience. Adult educators should help students become aware and critical of assumptions, their own, and others’. As adult learners, we should be part of transformative learning by being critical with our frames of reference, starting from understanding the world unconsciously in childhood experience, and moving toward a frame of reference with more self-reflection and integration of experience. We should understand the forms, autonomous thinking in transformation theory, and the two domains of learning—instrumental and communicative—as well as their definitions, comparisons, and applications in adult learning. Our experience’s premises, distortions, and situations should be identified and analysed through a transformative lens. Our meaning perspectives are broadened as they are challenged through many deformations and reformations.</p>

Transformative learning, epistemology and technology in adult education

2020 ◽  
pp. 147797142091860
Author(s):  
Victor Wang ◽  
Geraldine Torrisi-Steele ◽  
Elizabeth Reinsfield
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Adult Learning ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Teaching Strategy ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Adult Educators ◽  
Learning Contexts

Adult learners can have well-established ‘ways of knowing’, so a process of transformation represents learning that challenges them to discover new ways of thinking. Transformative learning is thus a frame for the practice of adult educators. The affordances of technologies can be exploited to facilitate transformative learning in adult learning contexts. However, this response is not consistently applied. In the present article, the authors highlight that technology is a tool within teaching strategy, and that it can be used to facilitate transformative learning albeit in a slightly different manner depending upon the epistemological stance of the educator. Adult and vocational teaching practice is positioned within four epistemological stances: post-positivist, constructivist, advocacy/participatory and pragmatism. Discussion focuses on the opportunities for transformative learning, made possible by digital technologies, within each of these epistemological stances.

Framing the Role of Culture Reflecting on How Culture Affects Learners in Transformative Learning Settings

2019 ◽  
pp. 30-44
Author(s):  
Priscilla Bamba
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Learning Environment ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Academic World ◽  
The World ◽  
Time And Energy

From the simplest cell phone to virtual reality headsets, students today are bombarded by technology, so this is bound to affect their expectations in the learning environment and the way they relate to cognitive challenges. Today's culture is an immersion of advanced methods of communicating with each other and with their instructors. Adult learners who return to the world of higher education after having been away for some time have often felt the need to strive harder to show they fit into that world. With a broader worldview, more responsibilities, and often more wisdom gained from having held jobs, sometimes for years, they also bring a richer way of relating to the academic world. At the same, time, though, sometimes responsibilities, including full family lives, limit their time and energy they are capable of devoting to studying and completing assignments.

New Perspectives of Andragogy in Relation to the Use of Technology

2013 ◽  
pp. 1606-1621
Author(s):  
Lesley Farmer
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Adult Learning ◽  
Learning Environment ◽  
Older Adult ◽  
Adult Educators ◽  
Technological Factors ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
And Control ◽  
Older Adult Learners

This chapter examines technological factors that influence the conditions and processes of adult learning, and how adult educators can deal with those changes effectively. Technology can reinforce and enhance adult learning, providing a learning environment with tools and resources that the learner can explore and control, thus fostering more independent, adult-centered learning. Adult learning changes because of the need to learn how to use technology tools, the opportunity for expanded access to resources, the variations in designing and experiencing learning experiences, and the expanded opportunities to engage with these resources and with other learners. Several issues contextualize the realities and challenges of adult learning as impacted by technology: workplace learning and learning organizations, informal learning, distance education, globalization, the Digital Divide, and older adult learners. Emerging trends are also mentioned.

scholarly journals Experiential Graduate Education: An Experiment in Transformative Learning

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Laiken
Keyword(s):  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Adult Students ◽  
Adult Educators ◽  
Transformative Learning Theory ◽  
Graduate Course ◽  
Mature Adult ◽  
Constructive Learning ◽  
Personal Mastery ◽  
Transformative Impact

Five years of teaching a graduate course in organizational learning have convinced the author that the course has a transformative impact on her mature adult students. The article examines the nature of this form of experiential education in the light of transformative learning theory and learning organization concepts. Using the course as a case example, the author offers a number of specific approaches to: developing a constructive learning environment; enhancing team learning; surfacing and discussing assumptions; supporting systems thinking; and personal mastery. Finally, the author examines the role of the instructor as a facilitator of transformative learning. The objectives are to help adult educators reflect on one kind of environment that seems to have a transformative impact and to explore how to continue to successfully design such experiences for and with adult students.

Lights, Camera, Andragogy! Adult Learning and Development in Film

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 150-159
Author(s):  
Adam McClain
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Adult Learning ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Adult Educators ◽  
Learning And Development ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Adult Learning And Development

This article will examine specific films that portray events or phenomena of adult learning and development, and how adult learning and development can be explored by studying the lives of the fictional characters in film. It will demonstrate how the use of contemporary film by adult educators and adult learners can enhance insights about people, about life’s dilemmas, and about the growth and development in adulthood. To teach adults successfully, methods and techniques must be adapted to their skills and environments. Despite genre or popularity, film has the opportunity to tell a story and/or be a real-life recording. Film provides another strategy of telling stories to help adult educators and adult learners have further reflection, insights, emotional reactions, and enhance various life experiences and stages of development. Learners can use film to better understand narratives outside of their own and develop alternative interpretations, and film can also be used to observe social phenomena in a noninvasive way. The films discussed in the article were chosen by the author to draw the attention to examples of various aspects of adult learning and development.

Illuminating Transformative Learning/Assessment: Infusing Creativity, Reciprocity, and Care Into Higher Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 154134462110451
Author(s):  
Michelle Searle ◽  
Claire Ahn ◽  
Lynn Fels ◽  
Katrina Carbone
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Learning Assessment ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Jack Mezirow ◽  
The World ◽  
Holistic Assessment ◽  
The Individual

In this article, the authors speak to the paradox of assessing transformative learning (TL) in higher education. TL theory, developed by Jack Mezirow, is a theory of learning to describe the process of change in how individuals view the world based on previous experiences. Recognizing that the 10 phases of Mezirow’s TL theory are fluid and intertwined, three prominent aspects resonated within the individual narratives: the importance of a disorienting dilemma, the qualities of self-reflection, and liberatory actions. By exploring the complexities, challenges, and possibilities encountered in their classrooms, the shared narratives reveal how students were engaged in TL and embedded within are holistic assessment processes the authors enacted with learners. Throughout this dialogical narrative inquiry focused on assessment, the authors underwent their own TL in the presence of each other, confessing uncertainties and vulnerabilities, thus showcasing the potential to transform understanding with and through reciprocal learning.

Assessing Adult Learning and Learning Styles

2011 ◽  
pp. 143-153
Author(s):  
E. Paulette Isaac
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Adult Learning ◽  
Learning Styles ◽  
Adult Educators ◽  
Learning And Development ◽  
Know How ◽  
Education Literature ◽  
Learning Assessments ◽  
Adult Learning And Development

Adults have different learning styles which can either enhance or deter their learning. In the conversation that follows, I discuss the utility of assessing adult learning and the diversity of learning styles. Adult education literature is replete with discussions on characteristics of adult learners and adult learning and development. But how do we actually know if adults gained the knowledge they set out to learn? We know that there are several factors that should be taken into consideration when facilitating adult learning, but as adult educators and practitioners of the field, it is equally important that we learn and/or know how to deploy various approaches in assessing adult learning. In this chapter are brief discussions on adult learning, learning styles, and learning assessments.

Adapting Adult Educators’ Teaching Philosophies to Foster Adult Learners’ Transformation and Emancipation

2013 ◽  
pp. 134-147
Author(s):  
Victor X. Wang ◽  
Patricia Cranton
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Transformational Learning ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Adult Educators ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Teaching Philosophies ◽  
Diverse Individual

This chapter argues that adult educators need to adapt their philosophy and their teaching roles to foster adult learners’ transformative learning, and it proposes a model that illustrates this process. The most common purposes of adult education are represented by five underlying philosophies as fully discussed by Elias and Merriam. Adult learners possess different needs, interests, and experiences. As teachers modify their roles and methods in response to their students’ diverse individual characteristics, they must also adapt their underlying philosophical perspective so that philosophy, roles, and methods are congruent. The authors maintain that in this context, the role of adult educators as facilitators of transformational learning should be examined and their prevalent humanistic and progressive philosophies critically questioned.

Adapting Adult Educators' Teaching Philosophies to Foster Adult Learners' Transformation and Emancipation

2014 ◽  
pp. 1238-1251
Author(s):  
Victor X. Wang ◽  
Patricia Cranton
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Transformational Learning ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Adult Educators ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Teaching Philosophies ◽  
Diverse Individual

This chapter argues that adult educators need to adapt their philosophy and their teaching roles to foster adult learners' transformative learning, and it proposes a model that illustrates this process. The most common purposes of adult education are represented by five underlying philosophies as fully discussed by Elias and Merriam. Adult learners possess different needs, interests, and experiences. As teachers modify their roles and methods in response to their students' diverse individual characteristics, they must also adapt their underlying philosophical perspective so that philosophy, roles, and methods are congruent. The authors maintain that in this context, the role of adult educators as facilitators of transformational learning should be examined and their prevalent humanistic and progressive philosophies critically questioned.

scholarly journals Transformative Learning for Knowledge: From Meaning Perspectives to Threshold Concepts

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Hodge
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Threshold Concepts ◽  
Personal Change ◽  
Transformation Theory ◽  
Formal Knowledge ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
The World ◽  
Ways Of Being

Mainstream transformative learning emphasizes personally significant learning and liberation from limited ways of being in the world. Reflecting humanistic and emancipatory philosophical commitments, this emphasis can make it difficult to appreciate the transformative potential of learning for and by knowledge, a type of transformation adults can experience in the process of learning occupations and disciplines. The analysis presented in this article is prompted by a small, qualitative study of transformative learning that highlights the role occupational knowledge can play in triggering and bestowing meaning upon personal change. While mainstream transformation theory illuminates aspects of this learning, the alternative theory of “threshold concepts” accounts for the part played by formal knowledge. It is argued that transformation theory can be enhanced by threshold concepts theory when it is shown that the transformative potential of formal knowledge can be viewed as consistent with humanist and emancipatory principles.

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