Narrating Transformative Learning In Education

This collection highlights the experiences of an international group of educators as they explore the art of teaching, the philosophy of learning, and the tensions of working across socially constructed borders.

The leading authorities in the field produced this comprehensive resource, which provides strategies and methods for fostering Transformative Learning (TL) practice in a wide variety of higher and adult education settings. The book answers relevant questions such as: What are effective practices for promoting TL in the classroom? What is it about TL that is most helpful in informing practice? How does the teaching setting shape the practice of TL? What are the successes, strengths, and outcomes of fostering TL? What are the risks and challenges when practicing TL in the classroom?

Engaging in genuine dialogue and authentic communication is essential for teachers to assist students’ successes and help them further their education through refining critical thinking skills beyond the classroom. Critical Theory and Transformative Learning is a critical scholarly resource that examines and contrasts the key concepts related to critical approaches in educational settings. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics including repressive tolerance, online teaching, and adult education, this book is geared toward educators, administrators, academicians, and researchers seeking current research on transformative learning and addressing the interconnectedness of important theories and praxis.

The Handbook of Transformative Learning The leading resource for the field, this handbook provides a comprehensive and critical review of more than three decades of theory development, research, and practice in transformative learning. The starting place for understanding and fostering transformative learning, as well as diving deeper, the volume distinguishes transformative learning from other forms of learning, explores future perspectives, and is designed for scholars, students, and practitioners. PRAISE FOR THE HANDBOOK OF TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING "This book will be of inestimable value to students and scholars of learning irrespective of whether or not their emphasis is on transformative learning. It should find its way to the reference bookshelves of every academic library focusing on education, teaching, learning, or the care professions." PETER JARVIS, professor of continuing education, University of Surrey "Can there be a coherent theory of transformative learning? Perhaps. This handbook goes a long way to answering this question by offering a kaleidoscope of perspectives, including non-Western, that consider the meaning and practice of transformative learning." SHAUNA BUTTERWICK, associate professor, University of British Columbia "This handbook will be valuable and accessible to both scholars and practitioners who are new to the study of adult education and transformative learning and to more seasoned scholars who seek a sophisticated analysis of the state of transformative learning thirty years after Mezirow first shared his version of a then-fledgling theory of adult learning." JOVITA ROSS-GORDON, professor and program coordinator, MA in Adult Education, Texas State University

Becoming: Transformative Storytelling for Education's Future is a collection of powerful stories about teaching and learning. The book illuminates an inquiry process for educators to reflect on and tell their own stories of teaching and learning, in order to fuel personal, professional, and organizational transformation. The inquiry and storytelling process is modeled throughout the book by the author chapters. Through their educational autobiographies, the authors uncover opportunities for making changes in their own educational practices as well as those of the organizations in which they work and teach. The stories also surface challenges in the broader education system and the authors consider the ways to create more equitable, culturally sustaining, and transformative educational experiences for all students. Readers can engage with the stories in the volume to inspire their own personal and professional growth, and perhaps even more powerfully, readers can dive into the process themselves. This book provides readers with the structure and motivation to surface, share, and engage with their own stories of teaching and learning, and to invite their colleagues into the process, to collectively consider the possibilities for transformation within their own educational contexts.

This book addresses the disparity between transformative learning theory as espoused and practiced in the classrooms of the academy, and its application beyond. It articulates new models of transformative education that integrate transformative learning theory with other models of change and development. The three editors and eleven contributors draw on both theory and practice to illustrate how transformative learning has been introduced to a variety of settings and cultures, and synergistically integrated with theories of communication, participatory action research, and communities of inquiry and practice. Organized around the themes of creating space for learning; looking though the lenses of culture, diversity, and difference; and animating awareness through the expressive and performative arts, this collection will broaden awareness and aid scholars, students, and practitioners in using transformative learning as an approach to adult learning and social and organizational change in a range of settings.

"Stories of Transformative Learning is intended to encourage people to explore the potential for transformative learning in their lives, practices, and communities. This book illustrates the transformative learning process through ten stories of individuals from both inside and outside of the classroom. Adult educators and adult learners will find the book to be personally insightful and professionally useful. There have been many accounts of transformative learning experiences, but it is not often that we have the opportunity to hear first-hand personal stories of transformative learning. Here, ten stories are told directly by the people who experienced them, with additional commentary from the authors. These stories are intended to resonate with readers and to inspire people to create the conditions where transformative learning can occur in their lives and professional practice. Storytelling is one way in which both educators and learners can understand the process of transformative learning. Telling stories, reading others’ stories, and contemplating our own stories all help us to become aware of alternative perspectives, a process that is at the heart of critical reflection and critical self-reflection, which is, in turn, central to transformative learning. We hope to increase readers’ sense of agency and more self-directed, self-fulfilling lives. By demonstrating how others have examined and reconsidered otherwise hidden assumptions that constrained the quality and potential of their lives, we show readers how they may do the same."

The creative strategies in Design for Transformative Learning offer a playful and practical approach to learning from and adapting to a rapidly changing world. Seeing continuous learning as more than the periodic acquisition of new skills this book presents a design-led approach to revising the stories we tell ourselves, unlearning old habits and embracing new practices. This book maps learning opportunities across the contemporary landscape, narrating global case studies from K12, higher education, design consultancies and researchers. It offers narrative context, best practices and emergent strategies for how designers can partner in the important work of advancing a lifetime of learning. Committed to driving sustained transformation this is a playbook of practical moves for designing memory-making, perspective-shifting, hands-on learning encounters. The book braids stories from design practice with theories of change, transformative learning literature, cognitive and social psychology research, affect theory and Indigenous knowing. Positioning the COVID-19 pandemic as a moment to question what was previously normalised, the book proposes playful strategies for seeding transformational change. The relational practice at the core of Design for Transformative Learning argues that if learning is to be transformative the experience must be embodied, cognitive and social. This book is an essential read for design and social innovation researchers, facilitators of community engagement and co-design workshops, design and arts educators and professional learning designers. It is a useful primer for K12 teachers, organisational change practitioners and professional development facilitators curious to explore the intersection of design and learning. The companion website for the book is a practical resource that connects to many of the projects, activities, methods, designers and stories introduced in the book. The site includes links to downloadable colour diagrams, templates for digital learning encounters, and additional reflective narratives on transformative experiences. www.designingtransformativelearning.com