Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning

A Guide to Theory and Practice

Patricia Cranton

• Publisher: Stylus Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781620364147
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

The third edition of Patricia Cranton's Understanding and Promoting Transformative Learning brings a wealth of new insight from the tremendous growth in the field during the decade since the previous edition. As in the previous editions, the book helps adult educators understand what transformative learning is, distinguish it from other forms of learning, and foster it in their practice. The first part of the book is dedicated to clarifying transformative learning theory and relating it to other theoretical frameworks. The author examines transformative learning from the learner's perspective, and discusses individual differences in how learners go through the process. In the second half of the book, the focus is squarely on strategies for promoting transformative learning in a wide variety of adult and higher education contexts. Practitioners will be able to take ideas from the text and apply them directly in their teaching.Since 1975, transformative learning has become a core theoretical perspective in adult and higher education, and research has proliferated. In the past decade, adult education and especially transformative learning grew into a noticeably larger field. The numbers of undergraduate and graduate programs in adult education have increased and continue to increase as more and more individuals are seeking the expertise, skills, and training necessary to work with adult learners in higher education, business, industry, government, health professions, non-profit organizations, and community development. In addition, the number of programs in higher education (both undergraduate and graduate) that include courses in transformative learning has grown dramatically. These academic audiences use the book to further their understanding of transformative learning theory and practice.Drawing on the latest research as well as the author's own teaching experience in both online and face-to-face courses, this new edition will be a vital resource for members of the transformative learning community, as well as those encountering the topic for the first time.

1

THE CONTEXT OF TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING

Educators, especially those interested in transformative learning, struggle to define the boundaries and the scope of their discipline. Transformative learning is a relatively new field, though I wonder how long we can continue to say that. Still, if we think about the existence of graduate programs in a field, adult education in general is a recent discipline, and transformative learning is even more recent. We are still struggling with who we are, but in the last 20 years, research has proliferated, and theory development has reached a new maturity.

It is my purpose in this chapter not so much to review the different ways in which adult learning is described, but rather to create the boundaries around transformative learning theory and to situate transformative learning theory within the more general literature on learning in adult education, higher education, and professional education. When I teach courses and facilitate workshops on transformative learning, we inevitably come to a point in our discussions where everything seems transformative. Someone will say, “But if I learn a new computer skill, that frees me to do things in a new way and I feel transformed,” or another person will say, “Learning to read is a skill, but it opens up the world,” and almost always, people will begin to argue that children can engage in transformative learning. When a young person rebels against parental rules, is that not critical reflection? It takes us some time to work our way out of these dilemmas in our conversation. We deconstruct and then reconstruct the meaning of the theory. Perhaps what I can do in this chapter is to work through some of that process and at least clarify the perspective on transformative learning on which this book is based.

Essentially, I follow Mezirow’s (2012) definition of transformative learning as a process by which previously uncritically assimilated assumptions, beliefs, values, and perspectives are questioned and thereby become more open, permeable, and better validated. However, I have been strongly influenced by the work of my colleagues who incorporate imagination, intuition, soul, and affect into their understanding of the process (Dirkx, 2012). I have become interested in exploring a more integrated or unified theory of transformative learning (Cranton & Taylor, 2012), one in which the alternative perspectives in the literature can be brought together to form a more comprehensive understanding of transformative learning theory. But first, I focus on situating transformative learning in the broader context of adult learning.

Adult Learning as a Distinctive Process

Regardless of the context, adult learners are mature, socially responsible individuals who participate in sustained informal or formal activities that lead them to acquire new knowledge, skills, or values; elaborate on existing knowledge, skills, or values; revise their basic beliefs and assumptions; or change the way they see some aspect of themselves or the world around them. A learner might take classes to fulfill requirements in a doctoral program, participate in a training session required by her organization, learn how to ski, or join a bereavement group to understand her reactions to the death of her spouse. Learning in some form is an aspect of virtually every person’s life.

Given the complexity of human differences, the diverse contexts within which people live and work, and the many types of things people learn, it seems fruitless to try to delineate general characteristics of adult learning. Yet we seem to want to be able to say that adult learning is different from children’s learning, so for decades writers have tried to list those things that make adult learning distinctive. I review some of those characteristics here, though I also question how universal they are.

Adult learning is often considered voluntary. Individuals choose to become involved in either informal or formal learning activities because they want to develop personally or as a response to a professional or practical need. The loss of a job, a change in lifestyle, or a move to a different geographical location may prompt someone to want to learn. When we consider adult learning as voluntary, this leads to the assumption that people are highly motivated and interested in a content that is relevant to their needs, which may or may not be true. Many people feel obligated to attend workplace learning activities, and some may be required to engage in training or retraining. For those who participate in mandated programs, a skilled facilitator or a good course can pique interest, and even when people do choose to become involved in learning, their interest may flag for a variety of reasons.

Adult learning is also often described as self-directed. The concept of self-directed learning has permeated adult education theory and practice to such an extent that it is almost equated with adult education. Unfortunately, the definitions of self-directed learning are varied and confusing. It was Knowles (1975, 1980) who started this when he suggested that all adults have a preference for being self-directed. The term preference was overlooked, and educators assumed learners were self-directed. Knowles saw self-directed learning as a process by which people made the instructional design decisions—identifying their needs, setting their own goals, choosing how to learn, gathering materials, finding resources, and judging their progress. Knowles felt that this was a distinguishing characteristic of adult learning. It was by no means intended to be an independent or isolating way of learning; however, in some of its applications it became so. Over the years, self-direction came to mean a characteristic of a person (similar to autonomy), a method of teaching, a developmental goal, and several other variations on these themes. In 1991, Candy sorted out the literature up to that point and developed a helpful framework. He described the following facets of self-direction: (a) learner control (people making decisions about their learning within a formal context), (b) autonomy (a personal characteristic), (c) self-management (planning one’s educational experiences), and (d) autodidaxy (engaging in informal, independent learning projects). In recent years, there have been few developments in our understanding of self-directed learning. Knowles’s original conceptualization has remained the standard by which we describe the characteristics of self-directed learners and the processes of engaging in self-directed learning. It is important to note, however, that we cannot assume that adults are automatically self-directed.

Many writers have proposed that adult learning should be practical or experiential in nature, an idea that began with Dewey (1938) and has stayed with us over the decades. This conceptualization is based on the assumption that adults have immediate problems to solve and that they wish to apply their learning directly to their workplaces or to their personal lives. Kolb (1984, 2015) has elaborated on and contributed to the role of experiential learning in adult education. It is now standard practice that educators make every effort to include real-life applications in their programs. Acting on learning (or sometimes transfer of learning, defined as application in the world outside of the classroom) is often described as the goal of education. Mezirow (2003a) suggested that transformation has not taken place until an individual has acted on the learning. MacKeracher (2012) explicitly discussed the role of experience in transformative learning and illustrated this process through a case study of her own experiences, including learning to be a teacher, learning to be self-directed, learning to be a professor, and learning to be retired. However, as I propose in Chapter 5, people may vary on the extent to which they value practical learning and experiential activities.

Humanism has strongly influenced adult education; Knowles, who defined adult education in the 1970s and the early 1980s, was a student of Carl Rogers, a scholar well known for client-centered therapy. Later, Knowles was criticized for his humanistic approach (Brookfield, 1986), but Knowles’s legacy continues to inform the field. As a result of the influence of humanism, we tend to see adult education as particularly collaborative and participatory. Sitting in a circle, working in groups, and interacting with others are hallmarks of adult education practice. Educators describe themselves as facilitators rather than teachers, and they seek to establish a colearner role with their students. They consider a comfortable and safe atmosphere, both physical and psychological, to be important. As critical theory and postmodernism became integrated into adult and higher education theory, these assumptions were called into question. Early on, Brookfield (2001) used Foucault’s understanding of power to point out how many of our traditional collaborative approaches, such as sitting in a circle, lead people to feel vulnerable and exposed, and other techniques, such as keeping a personal journal, actually allow the educator to engage in surveillance or “get into the head” of the participant. Later, he provided a comprehensive discussion of how critical theory informs transformative learning theory (Brookfield, 2012). In this discussion, he emphasized that critical theory focuses “on how adults learn to challenge dominant ideology, uncover power, and contest hegemony” (p. 131). This focus, Brookfield suggested, is crucial for transformative learning to “avoid sliding into an unproblematized focus on the self” (pp. 131–132).

Going back in time again, Knowles (1980), whose work still forms the foundation of much of what we do in adult education today, emphasized the rich experiences and resources adults bring to the learning setting. If we disagree with all of the other characteristics that distinguish andragogy (defined by Knowles as the art and science of helping adults learn) from pedagogy, we cannot deny that adults have more experience to bring into play than do children. From a constructivist point of view, learners share their experiences and resources with each other to create new knowledge. This tenet fits well with other defining qualities of adult learning—people collaborating voluntarily to construct practical and relevant learning that is, to some extent at least, self-directed. We can question, of course, whether sharing experiences is important to all individuals and whether all types of learning are enhanced by this process.

Self-concept is a term frequently mentioned in relation to adult learning. On one hand, students whose self-understanding is not necessarily positive may find that this inhibits their learning. On the other hand, this can provide a strong motivation for students to grow and learn. The relevance of self-concept is also related to the prevailing notion that the climate of adult classes should be comfortable, safe, and relaxing. Along the same lines, there is the worry that going “back to school,” especially engaging in formal educational activities, is anxiety provoking for adults. This follows from the assumption that school was a negative experience for many, and a return to this atmosphere brings back the fears of earlier years; however, this is not the case for all students. Another line of reasoning here is that many adults have been away from learning experiences for a number of years and have rusty reading, writing, and time-management skills, which leads them to feel anxious about their ability to succeed. In the last decade or two, as people make more and more shifts in their careers and retraining and professional development become more common, this characteristic may be less defining of adult learning than it was in previous times.

Discussions of adult learning almost always include mention of learning styles. Those who specialize in higher education and childhood education are also concerned with learning style, so this characteristic is not necessarily specific to one level of education. Cognitive style refers to how people acquire, process, store, and use information, and there are a number of different approaches to defining cognitive style (Cranton, 2012). Learning style consists of a preference for a certain condition or way of learning and is generally considered to be value neutral (MacKeracher, 2004); that is, one style is not better than another. Kolb’s (1984, 2015) delineation of convergers, assimilators, divergers, and accommodators has remained popular over many years. Convergers, said Kolb, prefer to arrive quickly at specific, concrete solutions. Assimilators like to integrate ideas into models and theories. Divergers enjoy generating ideas and working with others. Accommodators learn by experience and engage in trial-and-error learning. Any labeling system of this kind has the potential to oversimplify and stereotype, so we need to be careful about how we apply these ideas.

We have been influenced by Gardner’s (Gardner, Kornhaber, & Wake, 1996) idea of multiple intelligences (musical, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and natural), though Gardner has always been clear that he does not view his typology as one of learning styles, rather one of different modalities in which intelligence operates. Similarly, we have Goleman’s (1998, 2011) notion of emotional intelligence, which is also seen to be a form of intelligence rather than learning style. Emotional intelligence has to do with a person’s ability to manage emotions, recognize emotions in others, and establish good relationships with others.

Some scholars associate learning preferences with gender. For example, MacKeracher (2004), among others, suggested that women prefer relational learning and men autonomous learning. This can also be seen as stereotyping and marginalizing women (English, 2004).

Transformative Learning in Context

How does transformative learning fit within the context of the features of adult learning as they have been presented in the literature over the last two or three decades? I now review the characteristics with an eye specifically turned to transformative learning.

There seems to be no doubt that transformative learning is voluntary. People may not always deliberately set out to critically question their beliefs and values; many times transformative learning is prompted by an outside event, and that event may be unexpected, hurtful, or devastating. Even so, people have the choice of being critically self-reflective or not. In a classroom or other learning environment where the educator has fostering transformative learning as a goal, participants still voluntarily engage in the process. If someone were to mandate transformation or try to force people into the process, I think we would be stepping outside the sphere of transformative learning and into something like brainwashing or indoctrination.

Is transformative learning self-directed? I see the two as interwoven. If we agree that transformative learning is voluntary, as I have just proposed, then a certain amount of self-direction is required for an individual to take the steps of moving into a critical questioning of beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives. People who are completely oppressed may not have the ability to move into this process for all sorts of personal and social reasons. (This is one of the criticisms of Mezirow’s work by those who advocate transformative learning as social change.) Mezirow (2000) said that those who are hungry and living in poverty or other extreme social conditions are not likely to participate in transformative learning. Merriam (2004) went so far as to propose that people need a certain level of cognitive development and even a certain level of education. Although these statements are questionable, especially when we are open to processes other than critical self-reflection as central to transformation, it still seems to be the case that transformative learning leads to increased self-direction, so in a way the two go hand in hand. Both are developmental processes.

Being practical or experiential is ostensibly a defining characteristic of adult learning in terms of adults having immediate problems they wish to solve (though I am not sure this is always the case—people come to learning for a variety of reasons); however, transformative learning does not necessarily meet this prerequisite. It is often provoked by an experience, and Kolb (2015) and MacKeracher (2012) saw reflection on experience as a necessary part of learning, but the process itself may be driven by critical self-reflection, exploration, and intuition with no further reference to the world outside of the self. This may be especially true for more introverted people (see Chapter 5) and in those times when transformation involves unconscious images and soul work (Dirkx, 2000). Discourse with others may play a vital role, and at times, transformative learning may look like problem solving, but I do not see that it is a practical process. If we follow Mezirow’s (2012) thinking, the outcome should be action, but the learning process need not be experiential.

That adult learning in general is seen as participatory and collaborative applies to some extent to transformative learning, depending on how one views the theory. Belenky and Stanton (2000), for example, emphasized conflicts being resolved through dialogue, conversation, storytelling, and perspective sharing. Mezirow (2000, 2012) saw discourse with others as playing an important role in transformative learning. The sharing of experiences and values within a comfortable group atmosphere can obviously act as a stimulant for critical questioning. However, transformation can also occur without collaboration, so I do not think we can describe collaboration as being a defining characteristic of transformative learning.

Transformative learning has to do with making meaning out of experiences and questioning assumptions based on prior experience. Our habitual expectations—what we expect to happen based on what has happened in the past—are the product of experiences, and it is those expectations that are called into question during the transformative learning process. If adult learning is distinguished from childhood learning by the experiences people bring to it, then so can transformative learning be explained as a prerogative of adults. Mezirow (2000, 2012) proposed that it is only in adulthood that people develop the reflective judgment necessary to assess their own reasoning about their habitual expectations.

Self-concept is as relevant to transformative learning as it is to adult learning in general. By definition, transformative learning leads to a changed self-perception. When people revise their habits of mind, they are reinterpreting their sense of self in relation to the world. I think of the college trades instructors with whom I work every summer in the Maritimes of Canada. They have returned to school after years and sometimes decades of experience in their trades, and they are in the process of becoming teachers of their trades. Their self-concept in relation to their ability to succeed in university courses may be shaky, but they have chosen to teach, and this is something they must do. At the same time, they are confident and sure of their skills as electricians, carpenters, and automotive mechanics. How they see themselves and how they come to see themselves over the course of this transition is often transformative. Their self-concept is central to the process they undergo.

Although it is not often mentioned in the transformat...