Transformative Learning and Identity

Knud Illeris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134465521
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In the current ever changing world – the liquid modernity – the most pressing psychological challenge to all of us is to create and maintain a personal balance between mental stability and mental flexibility. In Transformative Learning and Identity Knud Illeris, one of the leading thinkers on the way people learn, explores, updates and re-defines the concept and understanding of transformative learning while linking the concept of transformative learning to the concept of identity. He thoroughly discusses what transformative learning is or could be in a broader learning theoretical perspective, including various concepts of learning by change, as opposed to learning by addition, and ends up with a new, short and distinct definition.

He also explores and discusses the concept of identity and presents a general model depicting the complexity of identities today. Building on the work of Mezirow, various perspectives of transformative learning are analysed and discussed, including; transformative learning in different life ages; progressive and regressive transformations; motivation and identity defence; development of identity; personality and competence, and transformative learning in school, education, working life, and in relation to current and future life conditions.

This vital new book by one of the leading learning theorists of our time will prove of lasting interest to academics, teachers, instructors, leaders and researchers in the field of adult learning and education. It will also appeal to many students and researchers of psychology and sociology in general.

Chapter 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780203795286-1

The concept of transformative learning generally describes the acquisition and development of and changes in understandings of and dealings with the essential conditions of life and the outside world. The concept of identity is about being a person in the world, who one experiences being, and how one relates to and wants to be experienced by others. Both of these concepts were more explicitly developed during the last half of the twentieth century, the first as part of the discipline of learning psychology, especially adult learning, the second as part of personality psychology and to some extent also clinical psychology, and, since the 1980s, mainly through sociology. Thus the two concepts have been cultivated separately and in different professional areas, but at the same time they deal with the same questions seen from different perspectives, namely, in general terms, how to relate to one ’s self, to one ’s existence and to the outside world as it is today.

However, as both one ’s existence and the outside world have become more and more complex, unpredictable and subject to an increasing rate of change, these questions have become more and more important, and the growing phenomenon of individualization especially has made more and more necessary the development of strong self-perception and confidence together with the ability to manage one ’s life course in a way one can answer for and be content with.

My background for dealing with these concepts has first of all been the general understanding of human learning that I have developed over many years and summarized and explained in my book How We Learn (Illeris 2007 [2006]). This book also involves transformative learning and identity both as important topics and at the same time as elements of a more general unravelling of how learning takes place and can be encouraged.

In the present book I shall, however, go into more depth regarding the two mentioned topics and their mutual connections. I shall try to examine and develop further each of these two concepts separately and on their own terms, but at the same time to facilitate a later combination by which they can be mutually enriched. The purpose of this is to create possibilities for a wider and deeper understanding of the conditions and demands that are involved in more advanced and personal lifelong learning, development and self-perception, and which are posed at all of us in the ‘liquid’ and globalized ‘risk’ society of modernity — just to use some of the keywords which leading sociologists have proposed to characterize the current conditions of society (see, e.g., Giddens 1990, Beck 1992, Bauman 2000). For that purpose the book is divided into three parts.

The first part deals with the concept of transformative learning, how it was originally launched by the American professor of adult education, Jack Mezirow, in late 1970s, how it has then been discussed and practised and developed further, and what today is the position and situation of the concept, all of this related from the perspective of my own general understanding of learning and to other ideas and developments in this area. This altogether leads to a final emphasis on transformative learning ’s relationship with and connection to the concept of identity and a new definition of transformative learning on this basis.

The second part of the book then deals with the concept of identity and how it has been understood and developed, starting with the understanding that in the 1950s and 1960s was presented by the German-American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson (1950, 1968). After this follow examinations of the later and rather comprehensive psychological as well as sociological developments and revisions of this understanding in the light of the evergrowing speed and complexity of the societal development. On this basis a model of the identity is presented that allows identity development and change to be conceptualized through transformative learning.

Finally, the third part of the book comprises explanations and discussions of a number of consequences and possible applications of the combined understanding of transformative learning and identity in relation to various central questions of learning in theory and practice.

Part I The concept of transformative learning

Chapter 2 The approach to transformative learning

DOI: 10.4324/9780203795286-2

Transformation implies a change or alteration into something qualitatively different. Thus, transformative learning is learning that entails a qualitatively new structure or other capacity within the learner. In this way this expression involves the recognition that learning can be something more than and different from the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, in contrast to what has often been the understanding of formal schooling and education. For example, learning may in many situations include changes and transformations in the learner's general experience and behaviour — but the expression of transformative learning does not in itself indicate what is transformed and how this transformation takes place.

However, it is exactly these questions that I shall deal with and try to answer, at least provisionally, in this first part of the book. But of course I do not write within an open or unexplored field. On the contrary, the concept of transformative learning is already well established in both learning theory and practice, especially by the interpretation and the comprehensive developmental work that over 35 years have taken place, mainly in the USA, and with Jack Mezirow as the central figure and inspiration. I shall therefore take as my starting point a short description of Mezirow's approach.

Mezirow's background and initiative

When Jack Mezirow in 1978 launched the concept and idea of transformative learning he had for some years been a professor of adult education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York — the department where some of the most important figures of American educational theory and research, such as John Dewey, Edward Lee Thorndike, William Kilpatrick, and for a shorter period Carl Rogers, had earlier been employed.

Mezirow had through several years been occupied with adult education, mainly in international contexts and less developed countries, and had now at a rather mature age returned to the USA. Here he engaged himself in an investigation of women who had undertaken various kinds of adult education, which for many had resulted in essential changes in their self-perception and life course. This was in the 1970s when the women's liberation movement was strongly on the agenda, and it was the personal breakthroughs in understanding and behaviour achieved by these women that had given rise to Mezirow's interest in emancipating learning processes, which are able to make qualitative changes in adults' self-perception and understanding of the outside world (Mezirow 1978, 2006, 2009).

Mezirow's professional and theoretical orientation was especially inspired by the work of three other contemporary researchers. In Brazilian Paulo Freire's work in less developed countries Mezirow had noted how elementary literacy education, by being combined with so-called ‘generative words’, could contribute to a raising of societal consciousness and result in emancipation (Freire 1970). In the theories of the German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas on practice and communication Mezirow had been inspired by the distinction between instrumental and communicative learning (Habermas 1971 [1968]). And from the American psychiatrist Roger Gould's theory and practice Mezirow had learned about how adults can surmount early acquired inhibitions (Gould 1978).

The fundamental understanding

On the basis of these sources of inspiration Mezirow developed his concept of transformative learning as fundamentally dealing with the creation of meaning in adults' lives. The term ‘meaning’ is here used as the basic concept for how the individual understands her- or himself, and Mezirow primarily defined and explained transformative learning as the process by which adults can change their ‘meaning schemes’ and ‘meaning perspectives’.

Meaning schemes are in Mezirow's definiton ‘sets of related and habitual expectations governing if-then, cause-effect, and category relationships as well as event sequences’ (Mezirow 1990, p. 2), i.e. accustomed implicit rules, which direct our understanding. As a typical example of a meaning scheme Mezirow time and again mentions prejudice against others due to their gender, race or the like. But meaning schemes also include a lot of everyday notions about how things hang together, as for example ‘that food satisfies hunger, that when walking we reduce the distance between two points, and when we press the door handle and push the door it will open’ (Mezirow 1990, p. 2) — just to mention a few of an almost endless number of accustomed connections, which we do not consider although they govern our expectations and interpretations.

Meaning perspectives are a higher order of schemes, theories, plans, convictions, prototypes, objectives and evaluations as well as what linguists call argumental networks, i.e. the structures of assumption which apply to how new experience is acquired and transformed in the light of earlier experience through interpretation (see, e.g. Mezirow 1990, p. 2). Mezirow has also to a growing extent used the term ‘frames of reference’ more or less synonymously with that of ‘meaning perspectives’ — possibly because his concept of meaning has been criticized for being too cognitively biased, while ‘frames of reference’ has a broader scope as it also includes both habits of mind and points of view (Mezirow 2000, p. 17). In general they are mental structures, which, according to Mezirow, typically can include areas as the sociolingustic, the moral-ethical, the epistemic, the philosophical and the aesthetic (Mezirow 2000, p. 17).

According to Mezirow our meaning schemes, meaning perspectives and frames of reference nearly always stem from our original socialization in childhood, and they basically structure our patterns of understandings, convictions, habits, ways of acting and altogether the way in which we live our lives. They may be either within or outside our awareness, but in both cases they are something in which we only make changes when we subjectively find it very necessary to do so.

This is because such changes presuppose what Mezirow has termed ‘transformations’, which are profound, demanding, but also developing learning processes, quite different from the kinds of learning dealing with the acquisition of knowledge and skills. To work rationally with such transformations, i.e. to acquire a better, more valid and appropriate understanding of one's insights, attitudes and perceptions regarding the outside world, usually involves reflection. However, when systematically reflecting on our insights and assumptions, it is, according to Mezirow, not enough to consider how or why one has experienced, thought, felt or acted in various situations. The most important considerations are those concerning how to act in new, similar situations on the basis of new experience and understanding. When doing so one applies critical reflection, which is the core of transformative learning.

In this connection Mezirow emphasizes that reflection can be supported by ‘discourse’ as this concept has been used by Habermas, i.e. a concentrated, unprejudiced and goal-directed exchange of views with others, desire for accurate and complete information, freedom from coercion and distorting self-deception, openness to alternative points of view, empathy and concern about how others think and feel, ability to weigh evidence and assess arguments objectively, great awareness of the context of ideas and, critically, reflection on the assumptions of one's self and others, equal opportunity to participate in the various roles of the discourse, willingness to seek understanding, and agreement to accept the resulting best judgment (Mezirow 2000, p. 14 f.).

Furthermore, as another important feature Mezirow mentions that the crucial changes in connection with transformative learning take place when the results of discourse and reflection are implemented in practice through different ways of acting. It is not enough to discuss and consider, the thoughts must also be manifested in action — which may also involve realizing that one cannot always in practice fully live up to the mental transformations one has been through.

Transformative learning in practice

In practice transformative learning can take place in a lot of different ways, so obviously it is not possible to give a general description or direction of how to teach, establish or provoke such learning. However, over the years many descriptions of educational activities that have involved transformative learning have appeared, and in the last book in which Mezirow has been involved (Mezirow et al. 2009) his co-editor, Professor Edward Taylor from Penn State University, in the context of extensive studies of available writings on transformative learning in theory and practice, has extracted a number of core elements, which he refers to as ‘the essential components that frame a transformative approach to teaching’ (Taylor 2009, p. 4). Taylor also emphasizes that ‘these elements have an interdependent relationship’ and certainly cannot be understood as ‘a series of decontextualized teaching techniques or strategies that can be applied arbitrarily without an appreciation for their connection to a larger theoretical framework of transformative learning theory’ (p. 4). ‘It is the reciprocal relationship between the core elements and the theoretical orientation of transformative learning that provides a lens for making meaning and guiding a transformative practice’ (p. 5).

The first core element is individual experience, which concerns what each learner brings with her or him and experiences in the educational process, and which ‘constitutes a starting point for discourse leading to critical examination of normative assumptions underpinning the learner's … value judgments or normative expectations’ (Mezirow 2000, p. 31). Therefore the teacher's and the joint activities must lead to and support the development of experience and reflection that can provide the participants with new ideas and understandings of themselves and their surroundings. The life experience of the participants seems to be of decisive importance, but of course it is also important which individual and common experience the educational activities give rise to, and Taylor's research indicates that value-laden content and intensive experiential activities can lead to critical reflection and thereby p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• Part I The concept of transformative learning
• 2 The approach to transformative learning
• 3 Other approaches to change-oriented learning
• 4 What is transformed by transformative learning?
• 5 The definition of transformative learning
• Part II The concept of identity
• 6 Erikson's concept of identity
• 7 Newer psychological approaches
• 8 Topical sociological approaches
• 9 A general understanding of identity
• Part 3 Transformative learning in practice
• 10 Identity, transformative learning and stage of life
• 11 Progressive, regressive, restoring and collective transformations
• 12 Motivation and identity defence
• 13 Personality and competence development
• 14 Transformative learning in school and education
• 15 Transformative learning in working life
• 16 Transformative learning, individual and society
• References
• Index