A Disorienting Dilemma: Teaching and Learning in Technology Education During a Time of Crisis

The way individuals interpret and reinterpret their experience is central to meaning-making and, ultimately, to teaching learning. Grounded in Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory, this research explores whether pandemic-related emergency remote teaching manifested in a disorienting dilemma for technology educators. Educators negotiated curricular outcomes between physical aspects of making and doing and design and creative problem solving resulting in a pandemic transformed pedagogy. Thematic analysis revealed that making and doing was severely challenged due to decreased communication, student motivation and engagement. However, most concerning to educators was the heightened disparity in equity and access in their most vulnerable and at-risk students.

Agency: The Force and Compass of Transformation

Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning presupposes agency. Agency is the means by which the limitations of an inadequate meaning perspective are transcended. It is the creative activity necessitated by an encounter with a disorienting dilemma. This implies that transformation cannot be achieved from within the existent meaning perspective. It can only be exercised from outside that constellation of constructs. This depends on the person dissociating from that perspective in order to enter a groundless state where originary thought is possible. In that state, they have access to an impersonal consciousness. That impersonal consciousness, which constructed the problematic meaning perspective, is now utilized for designing a more adequate one. These processes are accompanied by associated affects. For example, anxiety is the affect associated with groundlessness whereas depression with the lack of agency. I suggest that agency arises when the situation demands it and falls away after the dilemma has been addressed.

Enabling the Exploration of Disorienting Dilemma in the Classroom

While learning involves the acquisition of skills and the development of repertoires, some educators harbor even more profound learning goals, seeking to enable learning that is transformative. Theorizing about transformative learning posits that it is precipitated by a disorienting dilemma. Disorienting dilemmas may be thought of as times when new information causes a person to call into question their values, beliefs, or assumptions. Transformative learning can occur through rich, experiential learning experiences or life events, and it can also occur in the classroom. While much has been written about transformational learning, the teacher’s role in the process is undertheorized.

Developing and Testing the Transformative Travel Experience Scale (TTES)

Transformative travel encourages tourists to self-reflect, question their assumptions, and develop a more tolerant worldview. While this form of travel is gaining attention, there is unmet demand for a scale that measures the complex transformative travel experience and potential outcomes. This study focuses on developing the Transformative Travel Experience Scale (TTES). The study applies a well-tested approach based on DeVellis and Podsakoff et al. to reveal that a four-dimensional scale, composed of the dimensions of local residents and culture, self-assurance, disorienting dilemma, and joy, can be successfully used to measure the process and outcomes of transformative travel. From a theoretical perspective, the findings suggest that the disorienting dilemma might occur at different points in time. The Transformative Travel Experience Scale is helpful to organizations that want to capture the positive changes resulting from participation in transformative travel when applying for certifications, awards, and grants.

Transformational Learning in Higher Education Settings: A Case Study of “Teaching Teachers to Teach”

Transformational learning (TL) theory posits that adult students experience a disorienting dilemma and then engage in critical self-reflection (Mezirow, 1997). University faculty are often not pursuant toward improving andragogy skills, including utilizing TL. The purpose of this study is to determine if student achievement would increase if higher education faculty were trained to be better teachers in addition to being experts in their chosen field.

Searching for the Learning Space

Inspired by a personal learning experience in the EdD program in Transformational Change, this poem expresses the author's disorienting dilemma (Mezirow, 1991) as she navigated towards a more generative learning stance within the cohort.

The Disorienting Dilemma in Teaching Introductory Anthropology

This paper uses Jack Mezirow’s concept of the disorienting dilemma to discuss opportunities in anthropological teaching to transform student beliefs. It compares the connections between classroom instruction in cultural relativity, a core concept in cultural anthropology, and field-based anthropology experiences related to the same concept. Drawing on examples from my classroom and from a research-oriented field school, my observations suggest that while students are good at understanding cultural relativity intellectually, and identify or define the concept easily on tests, they are not as capable at applying the concept to observations made of films or in field settings, situations which are disorienting for students despite the fact they have the conceptual tools to work through them. Further, the paper asks if trigger warnings and disorienting dilemmas are actually the same thing, wondering too if trigger warnings are consistent with the transformative potential of higher education promoted by Mezirow.