How Do Young People Deal with Border Tensions When Making Climate-Friendly Food Choices? On the Importance of Critical Emotional Awareness for Learning for Social Change

If we are going to be able to fight climate change in an effective way there is a need for a profound sustainability transformation of society. The question is how everyday pro-environmental behavior such as climate-friendly food choices should be looked upon in this context: as something that hides the need for structural change, or as a starting point for a profound transformation? The aim is to discuss how emotions related to conflicts encountered when trying to make everyday climate-friendly food choices in a society that is not always sustainable can be used to promote transformational learning. Interviews were performed with 15 adolescents. Emotions felt in relation to conflicts and how the youth cope were explored. The results show that the youth mainly felt individualized emotions of guilt, helplessness, and irritation and that they coped primarily by distancing themselves from emotions felt, but also sometimes in a problem-focused way and through positive reappraisal. Results are discussed in relation to theories about critical emotional awareness and prefigurative politics. It is argued that by taking account of emotional aspects related to everyday conflicts in a critical manner, issues such as justice could be brought to the surface and transformative learning could be enhanced.

Deployment of service-learning as a pedagogy for social transformation

Teaching is not only a traditional role of universities, but it remains one of the most critical missions of them. The pedagogy used in teaching determines if learning will be transformational or just transactional. Transactional learning has continually increased university graduates who become a problem to the community instead of being a source of solutions to the community problems. This study introduces service-learning as a transformational learning pedagogy that empowers students to identify problems in their community and enables them to work with the community as co-creators to solve the myriad challenges that the communities battle with daily. The study provides empirical evidence of how the service-learning model is used as an education pedagogy in the informal settlements of Nairobi to train slum dwellers in civic education and development. The study adopted a qualitative approach. The study's findings demonstrate that service-learning enables students to acquire knowledge and skills to deploy in their communities. It provides evidence on how service-learning can be modelled for transformative education. The study results reveal how service-learning as a teaching pedagogy can contribute to students' personal transformation and the social transformation of the community.

Using Text via Dialectical Journals to Nurture Liminal Spaces in Teacher Education

This article shares the findings of a study examining the use of dialectical journals as liminal spaces for the development of critical reflection in practicing teachers. In an online graduate course on critical teacher inquiry designed to foster teachers as antiracist multicultural educators, teachers engaged in dialogue with themselves as they responded to self-selected text segments in assigned readings throughout the course. Using Mezirow’s theory of transformation and specifically the typology of critical reflection of assumptions and critical self-reflection of assumptions, we analyzed the online dialectical journals of 23 teachers to better understand how their engagement with key texts both represented and influenced their reflective development and engagement in transformational learning. We conclude the journals to be powerful liminal spaces for teachers to engage in reframing of their assumptions.

Transformational Learning Strategies for the Secondary General Music Classroom

This article discusses transformative learning in secondary general music (SGM), while considering students’ transitions from elementary to secondary music classes. SGM is uniquely situated for expanded pedagogies and musicianship, yet a gap in music activities persists between elementary and secondary classes and between home and school. The authors suggest that autonomous learning opportunities can foster ownership and meaning making for students toward lifelong musicianship as well as toward transformative learning. Three overlapping aspects of transformative SGM are discussed: skill-building, exploring contextual understandings, and making time and space for creativity and ownership. Emergent curricula that take students’ interests and experiences into account is encouraged. The authors advocate for projects that encourage collaboration beyond the school walls to foster purposeful connections to prior learning and personal music growth.

Re-vision, Re-tool, Re-spawn

Gameful design challenges instructors to rethink course design for today’s tech-saturated, pandemic-sequestered situation now that virtual is a crucial mode. We share two recent examples of gamification—curricular and co-curricular—demonstrating how gameful design yields whole-person, transformational learning. First, we describe our co-taught Bible and Classical Literature course, where hero-students journey into the dark, accomplish heroic tasks, earn badges, and engage desire-driven, side-quest learning. Second, we describe “Human Salvo: An Experiment with the Antidote to Zombification,” a virtual, Covid-inspired alternative to weekly in-person chapel offerings. Chapel-as-game responded to our shared experience of Fall 2020, fraught with four anxieties: pandemic/contagion, political tribes, economy, and racial (in)justice (the primary anxieties that characterize zombie genre as well). Examples offer assessable evidence of learning toward specified outcomes. Our aim is to spark creativity among librarians-as-teachers for re-visioning, re-tooling, and (perhaps) re-spawning as game-oriented instructors.

Sustainable Workshops for Education Leaders for Applying Gained Knowledge

Workshops are very useful tools that allow participants to gain new knowledge and to promote selfdevelopment. However, most workshops tend to be presented in a way that isolates the workshop and the material being discussed and be more like a lecture than a workshop. The aim of this qualitative study was to learn more about how to design effective workshops for leaders. Saudi Arabia has set a clear vision for 2030 to change in education and learning. Simultaneously, the country seeks to increase the female workforce by 8%. To bridge the gap between work-shops and workshop efficacy and come closer to the Vision 2030’s objectives. This study showed how trainers could re-design workshops to be more productive and meaningful. This qualitative study used a hermeneutic phenomenological research approach. Purposive sampling of 36 educational leaders from different departments. Two theories provided a rich foundation and framework for this qualitative study: social constructivist and transformational learning. This qualitative study revealed themes; the implementation of different learning strategies, use of reflection, and the assurance of a safe learning environment. Based on emerged themes and subthemes, tips that workshop professional developers should incorporate when planning and giving a workshop where extracted. The study shed some light on how trainers can transfer the core component in learning that relates to both process and outcome

Transformational learning for sustainability leadership – essential components in synergy

Purpose Transformative learning (TL) and leadership are key leverage points for supporting society’s transition toward sustainability. The purpose of this study is to identify essential components of TL within an international sustainability leadership master’s program in Sweden that has been described by many students as life-changing, empowering and transformational. Design/methodology/approach Alumni spanning 15 cohorts provided answers to a survey and the responses were used to map components of TL as experienced by the students. Findings The survey confirms the anecdotal assertions that the program is transformational. The findings suggest that community, place, pedagogy, concepts and content, disorientation and hope and agency are essential components, combined with the synergy of those into an integrated whole that support transformational change according to many respondents. Originality/value This study provides program designers and educators with suggested components and emphasizes their integration and synergy, to support TL experiences for sustainability leaders.