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1 | Session Type | Title | Authors | Abstract | ||||||||||||||||||||||
2 | Experiential | Seed Bombs for Transformation: Using Guerilla Gardening for Making Good Trouble in Academia | Deborah Kramlich, Dina Soeiro, Regina Ebner | Good Trouble is a concept proposed by John Lewis to use peaceful disruption for social and political change. This principle aligns with the transformative learning framework which posits that transformation often stems from an disrupting event that compels an individual to rethink existing paradigms. Today, academia is often rife with competition, pressure to “publish or perish”, and an increasing disproportion of resources between wealthy and impoverished nations. This experiential session offers disruption through the use of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Question for the purpose of re-thinking and re-framing ways we in academia can engage with each other and with our work to bring transformation to a world in crisis. Good trouble involves asking hard questions, questioning ourselves, the purposes we serve, and the values that our actions stand for. Guerilla gardening is an apt metaphor for good trouble in education and research. The activities can range from fairly simple, such as throwing seed bombs in urban areas without any plants to more complex, illegal actions such as occupying empty lots and creating gardens. Our desire for this presentation is to co-create a transformative experience where “seed bombs” are planted to bring transformation to the important work of academia. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
3 | Experiential | Good Trouble for the Long Hard Struggles: Protest Music as Catalyst for Transformative and Emancipatory Learning | Randee Lawrence, Gwendolyn Kaltoft | Protest music has historically influenced social movements in almost every culture. The music speaks to us in ways that reading or hearing news reports do not. It wakes us up, makes us angry or sad, provoking action. When we are deeply impacted by a powerful piece of music, especially if it is disturbing, we are more motivated to do something to create change. This experiential session invites the consideration of protest music as an avenue toward transformative learning. Presenters will share audio and video examples of international protest music in history as well as contemporary society and engage participants in critical reflection and discussion on how the music and lyrics contribute to transformative learning and social consciousness. Participants will then be invited to share protest music that has impacted them. Together we will explore the possibilities of how music can amplify one’s own intentional pedagogical purpose and invite good trouble in formal and non-formal educational situations. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
4 | Experiential | Embodied Transformations: Exploring Scars and Stories in Transformative Learning | Giovanni Gottardo, Janet Ferguson | Scars can be an illustration of indelible crystallization of the problems, risks, and transformations we go through and of which we are not always aware. Through the use of the artistic medium and theatrical performance methodologies, an attempt will be made to offer a lens through which to re-signify one's scars in a positive key. Participants, starting (1) from the exploration of their own bodies, through (2) the 'translation' of the embodied experience, passing (3) through the creation of a common map of scars, to arrive at (4) the sharing and discussion of the whole activity, will have the opportunity to rewrite the story of their scars. These scars will thus be transformed from elements of rupture to elements of rebirth and restart. The scars are not denied or hidden, but highlighted, as in the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken ceramics are mended, highlighting the fractures with gold. The body is not only the place of wounds, but becomes the badge of restarting and above all a privileged witness, repository of profound knowledge. An embodied knowledge that opens the door to reparative transformation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
5 | Experiential | Transformative leadership: getting in good trouble as transformative learners | Jocelyn Chapman, Alexandra Danino, Lynn Hoare, ShaToya Williamson | We propose getting into good trouble by using embodied and interactive activities to explore various ways that transformative learners might begin to imagine themselves becoming transformative leaders, particularly through engaging creativity, systems thinking, and diversity. Engaging our creativity through various exercises, strategies, games, and participatory art experiences can prompt us to question our assumptions, notice our mindsets, and ultimately, help us to re-think, re-form, re-invent, re-shape ourselves (transformative learning) and our worlds (transformative leadership). Transforming our worlds with systems thinking is a way transformative leaders work with stakeholders to improve complex, messy situations. Rather than defining a problem, we choose to begin with uncertainty and work with stakeholders to understand a situation in context- e.g., historical, economic, social, and environmental (Ison, 2017). We ask questions of stakeholders to uncover the what, how, why, and purpose to facilitate actions which are systemically desirable and culturally feasible. To make change in the world, transformative leaders strive to be as inclusive as possible to better understand complex issues. They value stakeholders’ perspectives and encourage/embrace divergent and contradictory viewpoints, appreciating other people as co-learners and co-leaders. Transformative leadership is transformative learning in action in the world. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
6 | Experiential | Mindfulness as a Path to Transformative Learning | Marty Jacobs | Mindfulness meditation has risen in popularity as a means for attaining better health, a calm mind, presence in the face of uncertainty, better decision-making, and untapped creativity, to name a few. However, the type of mindfulness meditation that most people are familiar with only scratches the surface of this contemplative practice. The combination of Buddhist-based concentration meditation, insight meditation, and loving-kindness meditation cultivates mental discipline, tranquility, and compassion. This capacity for both insight and equanimity provides a solid foundation for transformative learning and meaning making. In this session, participants will learn about various mindful meditation practices and engage in a couple of those practices. After a short overview of mindfulness meditation practices, the facilitator will then weave together how mindfulness, transformative learning, and adult development integrate to create space for perspective transformation to take place. The session will culminate with a dialogue that will delve into the connections between mindfulness, transformative learning, and adult development in greater depth. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
7 | Experiential | Transformational Power of Liberating Authentic Emotion: Re-examine Embodied Feelings with Creative Expression | Yilu Guo | This experiential session invites participants to experience the intricate physiological mechanisms involved in the initial phase of transformative learning. The workshop will employ various creative mediums, including drawing, poetry composition, and participation in improvisational music, to encourage participants to apply their artistic ways of knowing in redefining the conventional notion of what is commonly termed as “negative emotions”. With step-by-step guidance, participants will create songs for their own illustrated emotional creatures, and construct a more integrated relationship with their embodied feelings. As they visualize the dissolution of the dichotomous interpretation of emotions, participants will ultimately unleash the latent energy residing within their authentic emotions for integral growth. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
8 | Experiential | Experience: Action Learning Conversation to learn knowledge, creativity and respect for other people’s position: research through an experience at the University of Bergamo. | Stefano Spennati, Victoria Marsick | Through the use of Action Learning Conversation and role simulation within small groups of 6 members of students of 20-25 years old (over a class of 80) expressing their experiences in difficult contexts, the project aimed to increase in each participant the ability to react positively to situations of a complex nature without stopping at the disorienting dilemma phase. Dramatization as well as impersonation of a role have been proposed as possible answers to specific unanswered questions posed by participants in each group with the aim to engage in critical reflection and to gain the capabilities to move forward with new Habits of Mind. The topic has been: Answering to the dilemma of students who are marginalized in classes and who are evaluated negatively, risking failure just because they made a mistake in their initial choice of study path, feeling discomfort. The final results have been carried out in front of the entire audience with the aim to understand if similar reflections came out in each group. To achieve desired results, music, pictures, videos and form of dialogues have been used as technique forms with the aim to carry out the awareness generated by the exchange of experiences between the participants. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
9 | Experiential | Radical Conversations: Uncovering New Ground. (This is a title change: the original proposal was titled "A Philosophers' Cafe: Stirring the Water underneath the Iceberg") | Larry Green, Laura Formenti | This 90-minute group conversation will begin with the question: Do the assumptions upon which TL Theory was constructed still hold true for the rapidly morphing world we now inhabit? For example, our current world presents us with multiple disorienting dilemmas including gender transitioning, multiplying pronouns, pandemic possibilities with associated lockdowns, the decline of the American Empire, the shifting geo-political landscape, biopolitics, medically assisted suicide, an explosion of legal and illegal drug usage. How does such a world enable or constrain individuals who are ripe for transformation? Furthermore, does TL theory adequately acknowledge and address the existential challenges that such individuals will surely encounter during their transformational journey—a voyage where they give up their orienting framework in the hope that they will discover/create a more adequate one? The co-presenters will open the conversation with some exploratory responses generated by these questions. Then they will invite those in attendance to join the discussion. In this way, all in attendance will be performing at least the beginnings of the transformational experience. Some guidelines will be offered that have proven to generate a coherent conversation amongst all. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
10 | Experiential | Drawings and narratives of life crises as a transformational process. | Charalampos Poulopoulos, Anna Tsiboukli | This experiential workshop employs drawings and narratives of life crises as a process of transformation. The process of transformation from immaturity to maturity encounters several internal and external obstacles. Gould (1978) suggested that maturity in itself is a "risky act" as children's fantasies, obsessions and assumptions invade the consciousness and inevitably induce mental pain. This is moreover the case, when people are exposed to real life traumas in their developmental pathways that they need to deal with. Mezirow (1978b, pp. 11). This experiential workshop employs individual and group dynamic techniques for facilitating participants through their own life narratives and mapping of crisis moments, choices made and pathways to change. Through mapping their own pathway and life course, participants are also asked to map the pathway and life course of the other (the stranger) (Bauman, 2016) in order to understand similarities and differences, find analogies and cultivate empathy. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
11 | Experiential | Allyship: How to Create a Space of Belonging? | Odinakachukwu Ehie, Danielle McCullough, Ruth Gotian | Despite growing efforts to increase diversity in recruitment and to teach principles of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEI-B), there are still many of those who are marginalized that are underrepresented in medicine and the business sector. This demonstrates a need for efforts that target the work environment and culture to increase retention alongside existing recruitment initiatives. This 2-hour Allyship workshop is based on Mezirow’s transformation learning theory to prepare work colleagues to foster an inclusive learning environment. The workshop materials are adaptable across different institutions and could be used at all levels of training to establish a foundation around privilege and allyship that can be further developed as one continues to evolve within their respective career. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
12 | Experiential | “Troubling” Learners Resisting Transformation in Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion | Trevor Cox | From its inception, the goals of transformative learning have been to “transform our taken-for-granted frames of reference (meaning perspectives, habits of mind, mind-sets) to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective” (Mezirow, 2000, Loc. 261). While these goals are often what drive transformative educators in their practice, achieving them can be quite difficult, especially when students are resistant to the idea of change, broadening their perspectives, or being more inclusive. The process becomes even more difficult and complex when the subject matter has to do with issues surrounding justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion (JDEI). This experiential session will engage the questions: How can we “trouble” (or create disorienting dilemmas for) learners who might be resistant to transformation without them shutting down completely? Participants will learn about and engage in several literature and research-based practices aimed at troubling resistant learner perspectives in more ethical and effective ways. While the literature and the facilitators' experiences will provide some suggestions, the session's primary goal is to elicit best practices from all participants who encounter similar challenges. Participants are encouraged to bring their own questions and strategies, especially surrounding transformative teaching on justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
13 | Experiential | “Trance-formative learning: using hypnosis to shift consciousness from within” | Katie Larson, PhD | Hypnosis can be a powerful tool for facilitating a shift in consciousness by helping individuals to access a metaphysical, imaginal realm in their unconscious mind. Within this realm they are able to engage with several aspects of transformative learning including practicing compassionate self-examination, critical self-reflection, reframing meaning schema, and trying on new perspectives. Participants in this experiential session will experience a substance-free altered state of consciousness as a result of group-hypnosis, where various transpersonal hypnotherapy techniques will be used to give a direct, visceral experience with one’s inner-world. Exploring this metaphysical, inner-world will offer new insights, self-awareness, and a deeper understanding of oneself and the world. In turn, the field of transformative learning is offered an alternate view of how one can not only shift their consciousness, but do so from within. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
14 | Experiential | Wade in the Water: Experience the Troubling of Transformative Learning | Kari Eller, Justin Eller | The evolving nature of transformative learning, the desire for reflection and dialogue, and the quest to see the theory progress birthed the International Transformative Learning Conference in 1998. In this same spirit, participants in this experiential session are invited to reengage the seminal theories of transformative learning, their unique contextualizations of them, and to bring them into dialogue with one another. Using communal automatism, participants will find themselves in visual points of disorientation and orientation as they wade into the ambiguous waters of transformative learning inter-theorization. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
15 | Experiential | Embracing Change: Developing Greater Mental Complexity to Meet Societal Challenges | Toni Aspin | We have a built-in emotional immune system that keeps us “safe” from the threat of venturing into unknown territory with our existing habits of mind. While this immunity is giving us relief from the anxiety of the unknown it is also creating a false belief that many things are impossible for us to do when, in fact, they are completely possible. Transformation Theory explains how we make sense of what we know and believe. It tells us we can interrogate our existing frames of reference, learn new frames, which then transforms our habits of mind and points of view. We can change our epistemologies. We learn that it is not change that causes anxiety, rather, it is feeling defenseless in new territory. Change can leave us feeling exposed to dangers for which we are unfamiliar. We can overcome our existing immune system by replacing it with a more expansive one that increases our mental complexity. With greater mental complexity we can meet the ubiquitous challenges facing ourselves and society. What better trouble could transformative learning get into than to support us in the complex act of choosing the world in which we want to live and creating it? | ||||||||||||||||||||||
16 | Experiential | Using Narrative to Transform Community – from the power of me to the power of now | Dr. Lisa DeAngelis, Dr. Deanna Yameen | While transformative learning at the individual level is powerful, collective transformative learning carries the potential to make organizations/systems/communities more equitable. The power lies within the narrative where individual narratives interweave into shared narratives. The question becomes, how can we create spaces where these raw, uncomfortable dialogues can occur; where recognition of the dissonance can open the way to repair; and where we can create a system where we support one another in living our values? One answer is public narrative. “Public narrative involves three aspects, namely the story of self (personal), the story of us (collective), and the story of now” (Yameen, 2014, p. 141). In order to move from models of power over to models of power with, we must accept our roles as protagonists, as leaders in our communities, and recognize that we all possess that power if we stand up and claim it. It is through public narrative that we seek to create more just systems. Using the 5 Critical Questions from the ITLA website (https://www.intertla.org/five-critical-questions/), in this experiential session, we will focus on exploring one as an example of how we can use inquiry to evoke a collective narrative. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
17 | Experiential | “Transformative Listening in Dyads: Creating a Space for Getting into Good Trouble Together” Pre-Conference Virtual Experiential Session with In-Person End of Conference Reflection | Tes Cotter Zakrzewski, Laurie Anderson Sathe, Anne-Liisa Longmore | The Transformative Listening Collaborative, formed to create a ITLC 2018 listening experience, continues to expand the application of our Transformative Listening Protocol in a variety of contexts. At the center of our work is the role of listening in dyads to create connection and understanding. We invite you to experience the Protocol to reflect on learning at the conference and ways to continue to get into good trouble together. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
18 | Experiential | Troubling School Change: Using Arts-Integrated Professional Learning to Transform Education from Within | Beth Link, Kathryn Dawson | School improvement efforts often position students and teachers as the problem that needs to be fixed, not its solution. How can the critical and creative capacities of young people and their educators drive learning and social transformation in public education? In this interactive workshop, we explore how arts integrated professional learning can be used to center teachers’ and students’ knowledge and inquiry to “trouble” and transform education from within. This session will use artistic strategies to activate critical theory and consider case studies of arts-integrated professional learning in a range of global contexts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
19 | Experiential | Troubling Transformative Learning Theory in the Context of Liquid Modernity | Tanya Behrisch, Natalia Bussard | We are taught that modern humans are located at the top of an ontological hierarchy above all earthen beings and matter. Technology becomes ever more efficient at manipulating and extending life, finding and extracting resources for human consumption and our insight into universal mysteries expands. Yet despite this expanded control, we remain insecure about the future. The challenge is to bring this ontic insecurity within our comfort zone by accepting our sense of helplessness, a type of “edge emotion.” Our theoretical framework weaves Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning together with arts-based research and the theory of plurilingualism to look at how modern humans might resolve what can never be resolved, that is, our troubled relationship with our uncertain future. The authors reimagine individual transformation in the context of liquid modernity, the ongoing experience of rapid technological change and uncertainty. They propose that the ultimate site of disorientation and transformation lies within our own emotional landscape. This paper invites readers to navigate the fluid potentiality of transformation within our very own “liquid” selves. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
20 | Experiential | Troubling Broken Systems through Caring Conversations | Henriette Lundgren, DJ Ralston, Kathrin Achenbach | The COVID-19 pandemic exposed deep isolation, inequities, and lack of care within our current systems. Neoliberalism’s emphasis on profits over people has further disconnected us. We want to trouble this broken system through an interactive session introducing conference attendees to a card game called “Caring Conversations”. This social technology, created by one of the presenters, has potential to transform systems by fostering what Chatzidakis et al. (2020) described as “promiscuous care”. Through intentional questions and interactions, the game focuses on imagination, connection, and empathy across differences. It offers opportunities to share stories and engage in collaborative meaning-making, leading to mutual understanding. In doing so, the game surfaces and troubles underlying assumptions about individualism. Instead, it fosters recognition of our interdependence and interconnectedness, allowing us to care beyond kinship circles. In addition, the game cultivates connection and provides insight through reflective dialogue. By making space for open sharing, “Caring Conversations” can mend societal rifts and nurture collective care, creating the potential for transformation. In sum, this accessible, imaginative session spurs connection and empathy, and it disrupts broken systems through reflective, caring dialogue. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
21 | Experiential | Transformative Governance: Principles, Practices, and Perspectives of Sociocracy | Renee Owen, Kristen Del Simone | This experiential session is for anyone interested in understanding the principles of sociocracy (AKA dynamic governance), how sociocracy creates conditions for transformation, and experiencing sociocracy in practice in governance and organizational decision-making. Using the International Transformative Learning Association’s (ITLA) dynamic governance structure as a case-in-point, participants will gain a basic understanding of, and agency in, navigating the sociocratic structure of an organization. As a bonus, participants will be enabled to actively participate in ITLA’s circles, such as the research circle, the community circle, the leadership circle, and the mission circle. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
22 | Experiential | The Bridge Between Transformative Learning and Empowering Sustainability Change Agents in an Educational Sustainability Doctoral Program | Catherine Scheder, Lynda Fernholz, Erin Redman, Yue Li | At the core of sustainable changes lies transformative learning, and at the core of transformative learning lies the community. Consequently, it can be deduced that community is fundamental to sustainable change. The 8th international Transformative Learning Conference “addressed the need for transformative learning theory to inform sustainable education” (Taylor & Cranton, 2012, p. 197). We would argue that educational sustainability drives transformative learning as evidenced by the intersectionality of doctoral student’s research and forcing us to get into “good trouble” in effecting change for sustainable systems. The intersectionality within ideas and amongst student research is strong evidence of transformation in action and serves to weave an inextricable fabric to systemic change within societies, environment, and economies. The intent of this session is to think differently, look for intersections of understanding and connection, and leave with opportunities to contribute further to transformational learning. This experiential session illustrates the bridge between educational sustainability and transformative learning. 1. Visual examples of student research and interconnectedness of transformative learning and UN Sustainable Development Goals. 2. Participation in an interactive, experiential activity that builds a web of community connection, transformative learning, and sustainability. 3. Participation in a small group mapping process connecting SDG's and transformative learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
23 | Experiential | Listening and Sounding Together: Collaborative Sonic Experiments for Affective Transformative Learning | Shannon Perry, Michael Pierce | This experiential session engages participants in potentially transformative collaborative creative sound practices and requires no prior musical training or skill. Facilitators will lead participants in a series of sounding and toning improvisations inspired by the Deep Listening curriculum of the late American experimental composer and electronic musician Pauline Oliveros. We share these exercises intended “to promote the appropriate attitude for extending receptivity to the entire space/time continuum of sound” (Oliveros, 2003, p. 1) in order to more fully access and express present-moment embodied feeling and the generative complexity of experiencing (Gendlin, 2017; Heron, 1992; Nicolaides, 2022). Selected sound exercises aim at embodying states of receptive calm and expanding capacities for deeper and wider listening. Participants need only bring their curiosity and openness to engaging with the moment. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
24 | Experiential | Exploring Transformative Learning Through the Lens of Dr. Suess: Leveraging the Iconic Classics to Reinforce Activity-Based Play & Enhance Our Understanding of Transformative Learning Theory | Donna Bailey | This session demonstrates how activity-based play catalyzes an expanding understanding of transformative learning theory. Organizations and educational institutions’ intentional efforts toward reevaluating play's value serve to cultivate transformative learning experiences. The flow of the experiential session will analyze a collection of Dr. Suess's books through a critical evaluation of how transformative learning becomes illustrated, discussing its correlation to present research underway on activity-based play and leadership development training and addressing how these tenets apply within respective communities of practice. Discussions will highlight how the cultivation of play space within an experiential learning and development strategy, centered on deliberately developing organizations, deals with skill gaps currently derailing many associations' leadership succession planning efforts. Applying transformative learning strategies within professional development programs equips the next generation of leaders with the necessary skills to thrive in their work environment and drive organizational performance successfully. This reimagination of the training approach invites learners and educators to move beyond their comfort zones towards traditional knowledge transfer experiences and embrace the new possibilities and perspectives of transformative learning frameworks. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
25 | Experiential | Engaging Interview Matrix to explore the Next Edge of Transformative Learning:An Experiential Approach | M. Beth Page, Catherine Etmanski, Tammy Pozzobon | The field of transformative learning (TL) has evolved and expanded since Mezirow’s early conceptualizations of perspective transformation. These are frequently categorized as as Freire’s (1970/2003) emancipatory approach, Mezirow’s (1991) rational approach, Daloz’s (1986/2012) developmental approach, and Boyd’s (1989) extrarational approach (Kucukaydin and Cranton (2012). As TL theory grows within and beyond these categorizations, so too do the practices that offer the potential for transformation, evolution, post-traumatic growth, and lifelong learning. In this 90-minute experiential session, we will use the method of interview matrix (Author, 2023) to engage participants in generating insights into the next edge of TL, by troubling the very notion of transformative learning itself and reimagining together what it means to transform and to learn transformatively. The interview matrix is a participatory information gathering and analysis method that involves participants answering focused questions on a specific topic and generating high level themes. In this workshop, we will draw upon participants’ experiences to explore questions related to the definitions, language, content, and processes of TL. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
26 | Experiential | Risk Taking in Questioning Assumptions: Centering the role of identity and context in Transformative Learning | Rajashi Ghosh, Pierre Faller | Mezirow (1975) defines TL as a rational process of perspective transformation which includes “interrogating our assumptions and then confronting the distortions in our meaning schemes and perspectives” (Lawrence, 2012, p. 472). Whether one gets to interrogate their assumptions is predicated on their ability to explore new behaviors that might contradict their current assumptions. However, sufficient attention has not been given to what risks one’s identity might pose to their exploration of new behaviors if their identities are minoritized within their context. While Mezirow’s TL theory incorporates context in terms of acknowledging that one’s meaning structures are derived from one’s early life context through social experiences, his theory does not give as much attention to how challenging those meaning structures might pose risks if one’s identities lack power within their current life contexts. Another related gap is the lack of recognition for the role of imagination, intuition, and emotion in the transformation learning process. This experiential session will draw from a holistic conceptualization of TL that emphasizes the role of affect and creative expression in critical reflection to support attendees to reflect upon the risks they face in questioning their assumptions needed to transform their perspectives shaping their disorienting experience. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
27 | Experiential | Expanding the Practices of Transformative Learning: A Collective Responsibility to Foster Spaces of Possibility through JEDI Dialogues | Lynn Sitanimezi, Kathy Geller | This experiential session uses a World Café (WC) design to apply the practices of Transformative Learning (TL) for troubling, re-inventing, and re-imagining Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) work on a global basis. Diversity, equity, and inclusion work is presenting facing backlash from many directions, reflecting the larger systemic issues at play in social, political, organizational, and educational realms. We believe transformative learning as an applied theory is uniquely aligned to support efforts that challenge and expand existing worldviews related to JEDI. This World Café activity will actively engage participants in dialogues that support both unlearning and re-learning ways that foster collective action. By actively applying five transformative learning practices (self-reflection, critical thinking, empathic dialogue, praxis, and cultural responsiveness) that promote perspective transformation, JEDI work is better positioned to have a greater impact. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
28 | Experiential | What does transformation mean for you? Paint it in the air. | Mario Giampaolo, Caterina Garofano | This experiential session challenges participants with the question: What does transformation mean for you? and invites them to paint the meaning in the air. Air painting is a tinkering project to create striking images using a camera and a light source. To complete the project, it is necessary to discuss a possible meaning of the word transformation, and represent it using a camera, a light paintbrush and a dark environment. Engaged in the process through the tinkering learning model, participants will appreciate similarities and differences with transformative learning as theorized by Jack Mezirow. Value of practical experience, promotion of critical reflection, development of new understanding, active involvement, and learning as a continuous process are common aspects of these two learning models. Differences also exist if we go deep in analyzing them: direct manipulation versus questioning beliefs, values and perspectives; acquiring practical skills versus generating changes in the way we think and live, tangible results versus personal transformation. Despite similarities and differences, the authors' understanding of these two models lets them notice how the two approaches could be complementary in tackling our blind-spots, chase our curiosity, explore our uncertainties, and shed some light on the dark side of transformation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
29 | Experiential | Discovering the heART of Transformative Learning. An interactive session where Art and Transformative Learning intersect. | Lea Metz, Abigail Lynam | How can you incorporate art for inquiry and healing for more significant transformative learning? Visuals are some of the first known forms of communication. Before you could write your name, you could draw a picture. Drawings can overcome barriers that language cannot. On average, we remember 65% more information when an image is attached to the subject (Bradford, 2011). Utilizing art as an integral piece of the transformative learning process uses imagery and metaphors that may connect in new ways that have previously gone unseen. Art challenges strategic thinkers to be more creative and visual thinking to be more strategic, thus creating an opening to let go and to let come (Scharmer, 2018) and fosters transformative learning (Cranton, 2016). Visuals allow for a space that extends beyond our minds into our hearts and will that opens a person up to exploring within themselves at a deeper depth (Lawrence, 2012; Scharmer, 2018). Art provides alternative perspectives that may have gone unnoticed before yet now offer a window for reflecting in a new way (Lawrence, 2012). Art implies thinking creatively and considering outside-the-box solutions. Join in to learn more about converging in the heART of transformative learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
30 | Experiential | Exploring Passageways into Transformation Through Storywork | Yabome Gilpin-Jackson, Marguerite Welch | This experiential session will engage participants in participatory storytelling to explore new passageways into transformation. Our goal will be to provoke and evoke meta-cognitive narratives that could further illuminate our understanding of transformation possibilities beyond the traditional understanding of Transformation Learning (TL), focused on worldview shifts/perspective transformation, which occurs through critical reflection and rational discourse. We will ask participants to use “Storywork” to engage with four new propositions that expand current understandings of TL to seeing transformation as both process and outcome that are realized in context, relationship, action and in holding the ambiguity of non-knowing in the transitional spaces. The desired outcome of the session will be to generate meta-narrative of implications for the field as a result of holding the four perspectives of transformation together. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
31 | Experiential | Embodied Approaches to Differentiating and Integrative Transformation | Stacy Husebo, Sharon Radd | This experiential session draws on foundational concepts within Transformation Theory (Mezirow, 2000) to engage learners in embodied approaches to transformation that result in increasingly complex, differentiated, integrated, and socially just paradigms. It draws on our experiences and pedagogical approaches teaching graduate students in social work and leadership programs. In the session, we will describe the conceptual framework used to design our courses, as well as the embodied pedagogical strategies we use to evoke transformed perspectives for students. We will then engage session attendees in three exercises in order to experience the impact of this approach for adult learning. We will close by collectively harvesting and sharing the insights that have emerged for personal and pedagogical application. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
32 | Experiential | Renewing Vibrancy, Compassion, and Connection Within Ourselves and Beyond | Catherine Etmanski, M. Beth Page | As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic endures and in working with colleagues and students who are leaders in their own organizations, we (the facilitators) have noticed a recurring theme of compassion or empathy fatigue (Stebnicki, 2008). With compassion fatigue, both the feeling of caring and acts of compassion decline. What often remains is a sense of feeling detached, which can impact multiple dimensions in our life. The antidote to this fatigue is self-compassion (Neff, 2023). In this workshop, we will provide what is potentially a radically new angle on self-transformation, as well as a concrete opportunity to address any empathy fatigue participants may be experiencing. In so doing, we invite a renewed sense of vibrancy and interconnection into the workshop space, while advancing the role self-compassion can play in transformative learning. Throughout this 90-minute experiential session, participants will be actively engaged in self-compassion practices as well as a liberating structure called Troika or Triad Consulting (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2014). Working in groups of three, this method invites participants to serve as consultants to one another, to support one another in reimagining the real-time challenges with which they are confronted, and to refine skills in asking for help. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
33 | Experiential | How and under what conditions can emancipatory learning encouragea new social contract for education | Carlo Orefice | The current processes of social and cultural transformation that characterize today's societies, the advance of neoliberalism, the increasing flood of disinformation (following our experience of the pandemic), the suppression of individual and collective freedoms in some countries of the world, all these phenomena allow us to ask ourselves questions and justify the indicated proposal: what education do we need in the 21st century? How should quality learning be organized? What is the role of the University as an educational institution and agency? Starting from these questions, since March 2020 the University of Siena has become the promoter and coordinator of an international inter-university network whose priority objective is to support research/intervention actions, training activities, and project experiences between Italy and several Latin American countries that have joined it and that consider the development and training of individuals and communities from an emancipatory perspective. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
34 | Experiential | The ability to transcend self-limitations and truly comprehend the other. Capability workshop | Paola Rigoni, Natascia Bobbo | The purpose of the capability workshop is to enhance one's ability to interact with others and stimulate critical thinking through appropriate prompts. The workshop is divided into three parts. To start the session, participants engage in 'icebreaker' activities to get to know each other and establish themselves as a group. In the second part, the focus is on the emotional aspect. In order to take part in this experience, participants work in pairs in turn. By using this technique, they can evaluate their capacity for active listening and avoiding judgment. Critical thinking is the third part's topic. Using the 'strong-sense' analysis method developed by Richard Paul, participants analyze sentences written by themselves, following a path that leads to recognizing the pre-construction of their thoughts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
35 | Experiential | Deep Time Walk as a transformative tool in Higher Education Institutions | Carolina Silva, Antje Disterheft, Matthias Barth | New transformative learning tools are fundamental to face the current planetary crisis. Integrating them into Higher Education is a challenge that requires transgressive pedagogies. While different strands are debated, e.g. transformation as consciousness-raising, as development and individuation, among others, several scholars agree that Transformative Learning (TL) is a process that provides critical thinking and a change of worldview. This proposal explores a unique TL tool to provide innovative ways of accessing scientific knowledge and philosophical reflections. Deep Time Walk (DTW) is a ludic and interactive activity that tells the story of the Earth while walking. For the proposed session, a DTW will be adapted to a static place, and participants will be motivated to learn and present creatively facts about this story, supported by provided material. The Deep Time Walk in ITLC will be co-constructed with the group, utilizing storytelling and embodied learning elements. Participants will experiment with and live the experience of a DTW, allowing them to understand the activity and to jointly discuss aspects of TL in the process and how to integrate it into Higher Education. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
36 | Experiential | Transformative Identity Development in Early Childhood Educator Anti-Bias Efforts | Thomas Burkett | The experiential session showcases methodologies used to support an anti-bias education program for Early Childhood Educators working in Head Start Centers, which serve predominantly Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) children and families living in poverty. The findings of an internal discovery period revealed themes and outcomes for learning aligned with Derman-Sparks and Edward’s (2010) four goals for anti-bias education. Transformative Learning Theory provides a frame for adult learning goals aligned to these four outcomes and a set of methodological considerations for curriculum development. The experiential session demonstrates two simulations from the curriculum and prompts consideration of application to audiences outside of the original audience of Early Childhood Educators. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
37 | Experiential | Wellness in Transition: Social Solidarity for Transformation | Stacey Robbins, Marguerite Welch | The deeply personal work of wellness, embedded in multiple social constructs, requires new perspectives to live fully and transformatively when entering and enduring transitions. Wellness and its absence have been well considered as a site of transformative learning (see for example Brendel, 2009; King, 2012; Hoggan, 2015). Wellness is linked to, but not synonymous with, both health and psychological wellbeing, and our experience of it is highly influenced by the 4.4 trillion dollar wellness industry. In a critique of the wellness and self-care complex, with its focus on individualism and consumerism, Lakshmin (2023) notes that “faux self-care gets wrapped inside the bubble of perfectionism, workaholism, and capitalism” (p. 23). Self reflection on, as well as critique of and dialogue around existing wellness paradigms may catalyze the development of new wellbeing frameworks that are compassionate, accessible, flexible, relational, and oriented toward liberation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
38 | Experiential | A Symbolic Process to Evoke Emotion, Metaphor, and Transformative Learning | Catherine Marienau, Kathleen Taylor | Today’s organizations, including higher education, must contend with diverse demographics, disruptive technologies, and global interactions. Successful adaptation demands a capacity for complex thinking and effective actions associated with a transformational turn of mind. In pursuing transformative learning, adaptive leaders and employees seek to create lasting, meaningful changes while also remaining flexible and responsive when the next disruption arises. However, when transformative learning is approached primarily as a cognitive activity, thinking is often flawed and behavioral changes may be transient. Missing is emotional thought, which has been historically regarded as likely to impair rational judgments and action. Humanistic psychology, recent findings from affective neuroscience, and the significance of metaphorical language underscore the essential role of emotion in transformative learning and adaptive behaviors. Session participants will engage in activities, prompted by emotionally evocative images, that may facilitate the transformative quest. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
39 | Experiential | Ecosophic Mapping: Why Intervene? Proposing a Cookbook for a Joyful Fuss | Ahreum Lim, Aliki Nicolaides, Trish Barefield, Allie Cox, Neal Herr, Shannon Perry | Transformative learning, initially framed by Mezirow as a form of adult metacognitive reasoning, involves navigating through liminal states where old norms are suspended, enabling transformation. This session offers a dialogic space for adult educators to explore transformation in adult learning, employing cooking as a metaphor for dynamic interaction and institutional change, inspired by Guattari's work in psychiatric clinics. Our intervention model draws on critical pedagogy and ecosophy to reshape ambience and relational dynamics, fostering new configurations and awareness. Participants will engage in "making a joyful fuss," (Stenger & Despret, 2011) a process of experimentation and resistance within adult education. This involves an ecosophic mapping activity, where adult educators map and share their working environments to deepen understanding of their roles and the systemic forces at play, after sharing their stories of resistance. This interactive session is designed to encourage educators to rethink and reshape the socio-material dynamics of learning, aiming to generate an alternative mode of understanding our role as adult educators. The session aims to catalyze transformative learning by rearticulating the discomfort and displacement that arise in the process of transformation, thus enabling exploration of our collectivity. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
40 | Experiential | Serious Play is Serious Work | Shawn McCann | The LEGO® Serious Play® (LSP) method holds the potential to take learners through more significant learning through the creation of metaphors, stories, and critical reflection. LSP uses systems theory to explore the complexity and uncertainty of our world. Participants then engage their expert thinking to create the landscape using LEGO pieces, which then allows them to think in systems and employ their strategic imagination while working through challenges and opportunities. Pushing past the limitations of expert thinking and engaging in strategic imagination can get participants into good trouble by affording them the opportunity to push past conventional wisdom or commonsense ways of making meaning of the world that are not in their best interests. In this session, participants use six LEGO® bricks to build a metaphor and create a story to share with their group. Building ideas with LEGO® bricks and constructing stories allows participants to create three dimensional externalized representations of their thinking. Group members then use questioning to aid each other in reflecting on their thinking. After experiencing the core elements of the method—albeit on a very small scale—participants then engage in discourse around serious play for transformative learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
41 | Experiential | Listening Through the Chaos: Toward Transforming Collective Trauma in We-Space | Placida Gallegos, Steven Schapiro | In this interactive session, we will delve deeply into conditions needed to create meaningful dialogue across differences. As the world becomes more chaotic and polarized, we are interested in more powerful ways to counteract the divisions that are driving us apart. This experiential session will engage participants in two emerging practices with which we’ve been experimenting in our work, which we call “we spaces for racial equity”. We will provide an interactive, intergroup experience by creating a “brave space” container where all can take risks, feel a sense of belonging and explore their own ancestral and generational connections. In the session, we will move from personal introductions to a guided visualization in which we invite people to connect with and bring forward a message from an ancestor, to an innovative “spiral we space” for sharing our stories and listening to what emerges from the group. We set guidelines in advance to invite people to notice and set aside their individual chatter and listen for the voice of the collective that is emerging in the space. Throughout the session we will share breakthroughs, barriers and best practices we have developed including specific examples and stories from our consulting practice. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
42 | Paper | Building Resilience to Hate in Classrooms with Transformative Learning: Innovation in Practice and Pedagogy to Prevent Extremism and Violence in U.S. Schools | Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, Vikramaditya (Vik) Joshi, Timon Hruschka | Reimagine Resilience (2024), designed and established at Teachers College, Columbia University, is an innovative program that builds awareness and understanding among educators and educational personnel in the U.S. regarding the precursors and causes of Educational Displacement in students, supporting educators in promoting belonging, connectedness, and resilience to prevent Educational Displacement, extremism, and radicalization among students in their schools and classrooms. The study demonstrates the effectiveness of the Reimagine Resilience Program in producing attitudinal shifts and positive transformative learning experiences in participating education personnel as they cultivate an awareness of their own biased speech and conduct; identifying ways to actively prevent educational displacement as educators gain new knowledge of protective and risk factors for radicalization and targeted violence. This study underscores the importance of innovation in pedagogy, practice, assessment, and professional training for educators and educational staff to effectively engage educators in extremism and violence prevention. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
43 | Paper | Radicalization in everyday life. Cultivating informal learning practices. | Claudio Melacarne, Loretta Fabbri | Part of these studies focused on radicalize processes adopted adult learning theories and highlighted how radicalization is a much more distributed phenomenon than one might think and can be read as a particular form of 'distortion of premises' through the construct of transformative learning (Wilner, Dubouloz, 2015, Sabic-El-Rayess, Marsick, 2021). This research aims to discuss the transformative potential of four practices studied within a project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education. The research moves from the idea of ‘microradicalization” (Bailey, Edwards, 2016; Fabbri, Melacarne, 2023). Practices differing in level and context (individual/institutional/social/work) are analyzed: the story of a person who becomes radicalized but does not adopt violent behavior (individual); the organizational practice of a school reflecting on how to manage the challenge of multiculturalism (institutional); the narrative practices of a neighborhood grappling with law-and-order phenomena (social); and business practices in a small neighborhood (work). The study of these practices allows us to present two paths of work. One concerns how to study radicalization by paying more attention to the dimensions of interaction among people and between people and materiality of experience. The other concerns the specific study of radicalization processes in everyday life. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
44 | Paper | Settler Decolonization: Pathways towards Radical, Systems-Level Transformation | Rebeccah Nelems, Catherjne Etmanski, Cheryl Heykoop | Many organizations—including institutions of higher education—are facing calls for Indigenization, decolonization and reconciliation amidst efforts to foster greater belonging, dignity, justice, and joy (Davis, 2021) towards greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this interactive experiential workshop, the three facilitators—all of whom are settlers—will present three tools that can be used at the individual and organizational levels to engage in settler decolonization and reconciliation with a view to transformative systems change. With an understanding of decolonization not only as resistance to colonialism, but also as enacting otherwise (Tully, 2008) and being the change to which we hope to contribute in the world, the session addresses the following question: How might we collectively and radically transform organizations rooted in modernity/coloniality (Machado de Oliveira, 2021) so that they are more humane and just for all? In sharing our stories, vulnerabilities and efforts, we hope to activate a relationally accountable (Ahenkorah, 2020; Wilson, 2008) space of curiosity, humility and open-hearted learning. Drawing from transformative learning literatures, including those on emotionality (Dirkx, 2008), expressiveness (Yorks & Kasl, 2006) and creativity (Lawrence, 2012), this experiential workshop aims to enhance the capacities of participants for individual and institutional transformation towards settler decolonization. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
45 | Paper | Through the Glass Training inspired by Pasolini’s Manifesto Theatre: for a Transformative Performing Arts Education | Irene Gianeselli, Andrea Bosco | The primary objective of this research is to measure the impact of a training (Through the Glass Training) based on the Manifesto Theatre by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1968). 236 participants were involved (randomly divided into two experimental groups and a control group) during the empirical phase. Here are presented the results of the Repeated Measures ANOVA on the factor Expertise which brings together three outcomes regarding the ability to apply knowledge, skills, and methodologies of performative languages fostering the daily life coping strategy and promoting transformation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
46 | Paper | Moving between perspectives: the practice of senso-biographical walk as a way of learning and transformation | Antonella Cuppari, Silvia Luraschi | Senso-biographical walks are an embedded ethnographic and autoethnographic research method (Järviluoma & Murray, 2023). They may also constitute a practice of promoting an ecosystemic sensitivity (Formenti, Luraschi & Cuppari, 2022) and a living transformation (Lange, 2023). Starting with Ingold's concept of correspondence (2021), the authors draw on the use of sense-biographical walks in research with people with disabilities, students, and young people with or without migratory background to explore two personal practices of walking characterised as an open, living, dialogical process of knowledge. This dynamic way of knowing challenged their perspectives and promoted new possibilities of feeling and perceiving relationships with others and with the world. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
47 | Paper | Transformative Learning for Students' Aspirations: a Case Study of Student Experiences in Informal Higher Education Settings from the Capability Approach | Carlos Delgado Caro | Higher education is more than the formal educational setting where students acquire professional competencies to develop as adults; it is also a period where their life aspirations can change through meaningful informal experiences. This research uses transformative learning theory and the Capability Approach to explore three case studies of students' experiences in informal settings in South Africa, Colombia and Spain's higher education institutions. With an interpretative paradigm and a constructivist approach, this research uses qualitative data sources, including interviews, focus groups, and documentary analysis. The findings show how, in these experiential situations, students can generate and readapt experience-based meanings and action-oriented decisions through a transformative learning process that includes critical reflection, inclusive discourse, and collective action. Based on the contradiction between prior learning and disorienting dilemmas, students realise what they really value, readapting their life aspirations. The research highlights how informal learning settings based on student experience can allow higher education to promote human development by expanding the student's capability to aspire. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
48 | Paper | Transforming Initial Teacher Education: Community Philosophical Dialogue to Develop an Intercultural and Social Justice Perspective | Isabella Pescarmona, Valerio Ferrero | Initial teacher education is crucial to acquire a habitus oriented towards reflexivity (Schön, 1984) and transformative learning (Mezirow, 1991; 2012), that enables teachers to become self-aware about their frameworks, reformulate those and construct new ones. It is about understanding complexity by acquiring multiple lenses to face reality and challenging it with flexibility. Our paper fits into this discussion by proposing the use of philosophical community dialogue according to the model developed by Matthew Lipman (2003; 2018) to design initial teacher education paths on intercultural issues and social justice in education. We explore its potential to reflect on educational processes in heterogeneous and multicultural contexts and question how it could be employed in initial teacher education; what contribution it can make to the development of a reflective and transformative learning-oriented professional habitus and if the use of this approach could become a resource for initial teacher education to address intercultural issues. We deal with this theme from a theoretical-conceptual point of view starting from an experience developed in a teaching course of the master’s degree course in Education at the University of Turin (Italy), in which pre-service teachers were engaged in philosophical community dialogues on the topics of intercultural education. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
49 | Paper | Cultural heritage and educational communities. Transformative learning and professional skills for a new urban welfare | Maria Rita Mancaniello, Francesca Marone, Marisa Musaio | In recent years, reflections and practices on cultural heritage have been enriched by new horizons that reinterpret concepts and categories, as well as methods of use and educational aims: these aspects constitute a challenge from a pedagogical point of view to which the project intends to respond according to the methodology of participatory action research. The project has three macro-objectives: to rethink in a pedagogical key the professional profiles of cultural educators and operators involved in the promotion and enhancement of cultural, artistic and museal heritage; to study their competences both inside and outside the educational system and to encourage continuous professional training, in relation to the changes taking place in the labor market, in the national and international guidelines on heritage education and in the Italian University; to innovate training environments, to identify and experiment with new areas of intervention and contexts of fruition through the creation of digital learning environments, solutions and transmedia narratives that make it possible to tell the story of communities, places, contradictions and urban complexities through shared, participatory and re-generative processes of social cohesion in order to outline strategies through which citizens can claim their right to quality of life. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
50 | Paper | Exploring the contribution of Transformative Learning (TL) to developing intercultural competency in a North Greece community hosting refugee and immigrant populations | MARIA SPYROPOULOU | This paper presents the research conducted in a local community hosting refugee and migrant populations in North Greece. It concerned intercultural competence development among locals and transformation of their worldviews regarding cultural diversity. The conceptual framework of the research was grounded in Jack Mezirow’s Transformation Theory expanded by Knud Illeris’ and Edward Taylor’s contributions; both theorists provided a rationale for understanding the connection between intercultural competence development and transformative learning. The purpose of the research was two-fold: (a) to explain the locals’ actions and behaviors towards the other group, and (b) to understand the role of transformative learning in fostering intercultural awareness. The research was qualitative and involved open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 6 male and 6 female members of the host community. The results illustrated the connection between extensive social contacts with refugees and migrants, and the informants' attitudes and behaviors developed as a result of the culture shock (xenophobia, fear of job loss, distortion of the Greek Orthodox tradition). The results also showed that informants, whose lives were affected by the presence of refugees and migrants agreed that participation in non-formal transformative learning interventions (e.g. cultural festivals, and seminars) could appease their fears and change their attitudes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
51 | Paper | Engaging a Dark Side Perspective: Integration of Second Wave Positive Psychology and Transformative Learning Theory | Adam McClain | Transformative learning is a process of self-development and transformation, in which individuals deeply examine their beliefs, assumptions, and values, weighing various viewpoints to authenticate their understanding of truth and reality (Mezirow, 2003). While this process can be enlightening, it can present a complex and arduous journey filled with emotional chaos and self-questioning (Cranton, 2016; Kasworm, 2008). Emotions, especially conflicting ones, play a pivotal role in intensifying reflection and learning (Dirkx, 2006). Venturing beyond comfort zones, especially during crises, can lead to profound emotional reflections; however, the transitional phase between two states of being can be challenging (Mälkki & Green, 2014). This conceptual paper presents a dark side perspective of transformative learning, integrating insights from the second wave positive psychology. Rooted in the work of Ivtzan et al. (2016), a dark side perspective emphasizes recognizing and integrating life’s darker facets to cultivate new viewpoints to deepen individuals’ understanding of meaning, navigate liminal spaces, and confront intense emotions. The dark side framework provides a foundation for emotional dialogue, aiding individuals in understanding liminality and transitioning through transformative learning phases. This perspective equips learners with the tools to reshape perspectives, discover deep insights, and enhance resilience, ultimately leading to a state of flourishing. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
52 | Paper | New Possibilities for Transformative Learning Practice through an Integrated Learning Theory | Eric Kyle, Mark Walvoord | Mezirow, Cranton, Taylor, and other scholars have continued to revise transformative learning (TL) theory based on new data, ideas, and trends in education in an effort to create “good trouble” for improved practice (Taylor & Cranton, 2013). Following this tradition, this pilot project causes more good trouble by developing a preliminary model for placement of TL amongst the constellation of common learning theories. We analyzed 65 general learning theories and 22 TL-related theories from which five core aspects of learning emerged as integral: neurophysiological, cognitive, affective-motivational, meta-psychic structures, and social-cultural. A central goal of this project was to develop an Integrated Learning Theory (ILT) that elucidates the role of TL processes in all learning. Two major findings emerged from this project: 1) TL can be conceived of as occurring at the meta-psychic structure level, and 2) TL needs to be an integral part of all learning theories. Such an ILT should be utilized to guide faculty communities of learning and practice. This presentation will provide an overview of the learning theories that were selected, the theory development processes that were utilized, the ILT that emerged, and how the proposed model may be used to support faculty training. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
53 | Paper | Perspective transformation and inclusive education: a literature review | George Koulaouzides, Athina Charissi, Effrosyni Kostara | Inclusion constitutes a decisive aspect and inherent goal of Mezirow’s transformative learning through the establishment of learning environments that value diversity and ensure equitable opportunities for all learners. Towards this aim, our paper investigates the ways inclusion, inclusiveness, inclusivity, and inclusive education appear in the research that has transformative learning as its theoretical framework. The collection of papers for our analysis, originates from the previously held Transformative Learning Conferences between 2003 – 2022. From our readings five (5) major themes emerged: (a) inclusive practices in community or organizational settings, (b) teaching and learning practices that foster inclusion in formal and non-formal settings, (c) educational design and curriculum development that serves inclusion, (d) inclusion as a learning outcome of transformative learning processes, and (e) how informal spaces/places (may) function as inclusive learning environments. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
54 | Paper | "Exploring Addiction Recovery through Hoggan’s Metatheoretical Perspective of Transformative Theory: A Comparative Analysis" | Giovanni Castiglione, Roberta Piazza | This paper examines addiction recovery through the lens of transformative theory, as outlined by Hoggan. Although transformative elements are often noted in addiction recovery research, observed in research pertaining to addiction recovery, explicit connections to transformative theory are infrequently established. By integrating Hoggan's metatheoretical reinterpretation, the study aims to overcome limitations in existing perspectives on transformative learning and offer a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of addiction recovery. Hoggan emphasizes profound, relatively stable changes in worldview, self, epistemology, ontology, behavior, and capacity as markers of transformative learning. The paper identifies common themes in addiction recovery, including its processual nature and focus on improving quality of life. It suggests that adopting Hoggan's model can provide a transdisciplinary approach to studying addiction recovery and guide adult educators in supporting individuals in recovery. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
55 | Paper | Is transformation necessary to become a better researcher? A collective introspection. | Umesh Sharma, Paola Aiello, Erika Pace, Stuart Woodcock | In each scholar’s life, there are often times when their research transforms into a new direction. The transformations can result in innovations in the field and could be of significant value not just for the researchers themselves but also to the field of research. In this paper, we will identify ‘critical moments’ in our academic journey that have provided each one of us with new ways of looking at the same phenomenon differently. We will look at the processes of ‘unlearning’ what we have acknowledged in the past assumed to be 'true’, and through ‘critical reflection’ focus on the reconstruction and validation of ‘new understanding’ about what we do, and the way we do it within our research and teaching. In this ethnographic study, we asked each one of us to identify three key moments that transformed our research and teaching journey. The analysis showed that while the moments differed in terms of what the key moments looked like and how we experienced them, there were significant overlaps in our stories. The lessons learnt from this collective introspection may be of value to other researchers, particularly those, who are in the early stages of their research and teaching careers. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
56 | Paper | Transformative learning and teacher agency: The centre pull and the outer end of the same ball of twine? | Paola Aiello, Erika Marie Pace, Diana Carmela Di Gennaro, Umesh Sharma | The aim of this study is to identify the essential commonalities between teacher agency and transformative learning theory in order to discern valuable insights that can significantly enrich teacher education pedagogical approaches, policies, and practices. Given the shortfall of literature interconnecting these two bodies of literature, a Delphi study will be carried out to gather the opinions of scholars working across the two different fields. Our objective is to initiate a process of critical reflection and provide an insight regarding if and how: 1. transformative learning and agency intertwine as experiences are filtered, evaluations are made, and actions are taken; 2. teachers gradually develop competence in making informed choices based on their renewed epistemic beliefs, taking principled action and enacting change, fundamental traits of teacher agency. Drawing from these insights and a scoping review of literature, we intend to explore the notion of human agency within the context of transformative learning theory and provide new insights about how this analysis could inform high-quality teacher education programs. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
57 | Paper | A Radical Enactive Perspective on Transformative Learning: Implications of the Agent-Environment Unity | Peter Hochenauer | We propose to advance theoretical understanding of transformative learning (TL) by drawing on more recent developments in cognitive science and adopting a radical enactive view of cognition. In particular, we focus on the radical enactivism’s agent-environment relationship as a descriptive and explanatory unit and on its implications for understanding TL. Radical enactivism focuses on basic (i.e., prelinguistic) cognition that emerges from the bodily interactions between an agent and its socio-material environment. Furthermore, an agent and its environment co-emerge and co-develop through continuous and circular processes of interaction. This historical development both grounds and explains an agent's knowledge, behaviors, and skills. We will elucidate how a radical enactive view of cognition turns Mezirow’s conception of perspective transformation on its head by focusing on non-linguistic, embodied agent-environment interaction and extra-rational factors. Moreover, we will discuss how our proposal can complement Mezirow’s theory of perspective transformation by preparing the ground for critical reflection and discourse from the bottom up. This is particularly relevant in situations where learners' diverse values impose significant limitations on rational discourse. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
58 | Paper | Transformative learning through Artificial Intelligence Caching: An exploratory study. | Gloria Mbokota, Olivier Malafronte | Workplace coaching has evolved over the years as one of the most effective ways of developing leaders in organizations and research has shifted focus to understanding the mechanisms, process and factors that determine the effectiveness of coaching. However, scholars argue that it remains inaccessible to most employees and therefore the need to democratize coaching has been a topical matter for both practice and scholarship. Extant literature on the future of workplace coaching points to Artificial intelligence (AI) as one mechanism that can extend coaching services to larger pool of employees within organisations. Recent studies that compare AI and Human based coaching have demonstrate that AI can achieve initial levels of human coaching outcome. Today’s Generative AI demonstrates near-human language capabilities that could enable individuals to reflect back and forth their own perceptions and meanings with an AI Coach, which could trigger transformative mechanisms such as reframing one’s meaning. The purpose of this study is to explore, using a qualitative enquiry and a multiple case design the potential of generative AI in facilitating transformative learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
59 | Paper | Digital Transformation: a catalyst for transformative learning for employees | Natalie Murray | Digital disruption is pervasive yet evasive in its complexity (Kane et al., 2019). Our digital lives change often, and innovations in technology and data permeate all industry sectors. Organizations use digital transformation strategies to adapt to a changing business environment, evolve the customer experience, realize efficiencies, and launch new product offerings. As organizations digitally transform, so do the employees within the organization. Employees and leaders of these organizations are experiencing not only a change in how their work is done but also a shift in the culture and values they are operating within, as well as the expectations of their roles (Murray, 2023; Riordan, 2023). 70% of digital transformation strategies fail to meet the intended business objectives (McKinsey, 2018). While much of the literature regarding digital transformation focuses on the technology and data strategies, the people and organizational aspects of digital transformation are rising in significance. The focus of this paper is on the employee experiences with digital transformation through the lens of Transformative Learning (TL) theory. Reciprocally, Transformative Learning theory will be examined in the context of digital transformation and explore the extension and evolution of Transformative Learning theory to today’s digital, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (dVUCA) world. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
60 | Paper | Toward Transformative Learning in Online Education: Testing a New Community Engagement Framework Model | Roxana Toma, Ali Ait Si Mhamed | A sense of community is an essential part of transformative learning; cultivating it can be difficult in online education. We draw on the student-engagement themes proposed by Redmond et al. (2018) - cognitive, behavioral, collaborative, and emotional engagement; these forms of engagement can be facilitated by online course design and pedagogy. These types of engagement, in turn, help foster students' social engagement, which, as a manifestation of social capital, is linked to better learning outcomes and increased confidence and resilience in the learning process, which are essential elements of transformative learning. Drawing on the community of inquiry and community of practice frameworks, we have previously proposed a new theoretical model – a Community Engagement Framework for Online Education. We are now surveying online students at a public university to cross-validate this model using path analysis and structural equation modeling. Identifying the elements necessary for transformative learning in online settings is critical at a time of growing population of online learners, and especially relevant in online adult education. Our goal is to identify the elements of online course design and pedagogy that correlate with increased student social engagement and, therefore, increased social capital, to bring educational praxis closer to online adult education. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
61 | Paper | Ethical Troubles in Machine Learning: A Transformative Learning Perspective on Bias and Fairness | Junyi Yu | As transformative learning urges us to critically examine our assumptions and beliefs, the current realm of machine learning and AI offers a parallel journey of introspection. Algorithms, often hailed for their objectivity, are now under scrutiny for perpetuating systemic biases. Using popular tools like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and BERT, we dive into the ethical quagmires of AI, uncovering biases in data and model outcomes. This paper explores how principles of transformative learning can guide the AI community in acknowledging, understanding, and rectifying these inherent biases. Drawing from transformative learning's emphasis on self-awareness and critical reflection, we propose a framework for AI developers to engage in a deeper, more introspective understanding of their tools. We argue that just as transformative learners are encouraged to step out of their comfort zones and confront unsettling truths, AI practitioners must similarly confront the uncomfortable biases present in their creations. By aligning the self-reflective aspects of transformative learning with the development and deployment of AI tools, we champion a path towards more ethically sound and socially responsible machine learning. This convergence of transformative learning and AI ethics seeks to reimagine our relationship with technology, ensuring it aligns with values of fairness, inclusivity, and justice. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
62 | Paper | Navigating Cultural Transition & Uncertainty: An Autoethnographic Exploration of a Transformative Learning Journey as a Latina Voluntary Migrant | Mitzy Velazco | The simplicity and complexity of my story encapsulate a personal experience that aims to convey a message that transcends beyond the surface to bring attention to a problem that may be unknown to many others. Thus, getting transformation into 'good trouble' by exploring the voluntary migration journey allows us to gain a richer understanding of the intricate relationship between individual narratives and the wider society. As such, I will describe an experience Van Manen (2016) defines as “the thing that happened to me” (p. 51). The “thing” I have chosen relates to the phenomenon I am exploring in my research study, which has taught me the power of letting go of control to accept change within ambiguity and to rebuild amidst the challenges. This autoethnography paper explores my transformative learning journey through migration and the acculturation I continue to endure as a Latina voluntary migrant, highlighting the interconnections that contribute to our collective growth. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
63 | Paper | Reimagining Teaching and Learning: the Transformative Potential of Service Learning | Livia Cadei, Emanuele Serrelli, Domenico Simeone, Aurora Torri | Transformative learning, originally introduced to account for adult education, was then broadly applied and updated, and eventually reached schools and Universities. Teaching and learning practices emerged in the last decades that bear close affinities with transformative learning. Service Learning is one of the most interesting. It is defined as a service activity carried out by students, aimed at addressing real needs that are felt by the community. Service Learning shares with transformative learning not only an experience-centered epistemology, but also the central role of reflexivity: it is critical reflection on experiences that fosters change and personal development. Not by chance, Service Learning methodology makes explicit reference to reflective and transformative many practices and techniques. Reflexive thinking, in both service learning and transformative learning, is the process through which learners re-structure and re-interpret meanings. It involves critical self-evaluation, analysis of experiences, and reconfiguring of pre-existent knowledge and visions. Coherently pursued, Service Learning – like transformative learning – is loaded with deep transformative potential, touching upon some paradoxical aspects of formal education – aspects concerning control, power, and openness-closure of educative processes and contexts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
64 | Paper | Troubling Transformation Through an Experiential Learning Apparatus | Heather Lindell | This paper explores post-anthropocentric transformative elements of entangled intra-actions by reviewing research of pharmacy students’ experiential learning in veterinary settings. Transformative learning theory and praxis have important roles in adult learning theory. Jack Mezirow is credited with first establishing transformative learning theory. Theory and praxis of transformative learning evolved over time in response to critiques, varying definitions, and perspectives of different theorists. Critical reflection is an important element of transformative learning praxis and is commonly applied by professional students within experiential learning rotations. Although critical reflection may seem anthropocentric, I examined students’ critical reflection documents and interview transcripts in my research to explore post-anthropocentric entanglements. I engaged the diffractive methodology of agential realism proffered by Karen Barad to speculate how entangled intra-actions are in-relation to transformative learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
65 | Paper | Transformative Dilemmas in modern contexts | Anna Tsiboukli, Katerina Kedraka | The current presentation addresses the role of transformative learning as an evolving field in the new turbulent era (Hoggan & Hoggan-Kloubert, 2023; Hoggan & Higgins, 2023; Hoggan & Finnegan, 2023). The presentation focuses on psychic distortions (Gould,1970; Mezirow,1981;1990; 2000) in the context of new modern dilemmas (Hinterhuber, 2020; Niebuhr, et.al., 2022; Pesole et al., 2018) that focus on loss and change. In the light of the current era, old assumptions seem to collapse often in chaotic and abrupt ways, leaving no room for processing and critical thinking. False beliefs (Gould, 1978) such as the safety illusions, reward of sacrifices, illusions of control and “cure-by-love conspiracy”, related to unconscious psychic distortions (Gould, 1978) need further exploration. The process of transformation from immaturity to maturity, happens at once as a "risky act" that invades the consciousness and inevitably induces mental pain (Gould, 1978). The risks for fixation to previous stages are also open. The presentation suggests that modern challenges need to be discussed and processed in adult group settings. However, the boundaries of the adult educator’s role in the transformation process are also present and create new challenges and demands for a ‘good enough’ context that fosters change. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
66 | Paper | Exploring the Role of Emotions in Transformative Learning Experiences | Zehra Bahadir Kurus | Exploring the Role of Emotions in Transformative Learning Experiences This article delves into the significant impact of emotions on transformative learning. It emphasizes that emotions are not peripheral, but integral to the learning process. The research contends that acknowledging and engaging with emotions can facilitate a more profound and lasting transformation. It highlights the importance of creating a safe and supportive learning environment that allows learners to express and process their emotions. A qualitative approach was adopted for this study to understand how emotions and feelings shape the perspectives of the participants. Twenty-four people who joined in new social movements were interviewed in the scope of this study to see the role of emotions and feelings in transformative learning experiences.The findings indicated that participating in new social movements brought about transformation in their emotions and feelings, which had reflections on behaviors and habits. The findings revealed that several participants needed to reformulate their old-established assumptions through critical reflection. Following the analysis of the data, we can claim that emotional-spiritual dimensions play a great role in learning experiences of the participants. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
67 | Paper | Influences of Transformative Multiple Language Learning and Use on Changing the Ways of Seeing and Being in the World | Natalia Bussard | How do plurilingual people see themselves as plurilingual speakers and in what ways might their relationships with other people change due to their knowledge of multiple languages? Can practicing plurilingualism lead to transformative experiences and expanded worldviews? In my presentation, I explore Jack Mezirow’s (1978) transformative learning theory (TLT) in relation to identity (Illeris, 2014) and emotions (Dirkx, 2008; Mälkki, 2019). My research in TLT is supported by sociocultural theories of language (Burr, 1995; Schwandt, 2003; William & Schwartz, 2020) and the theory of plurilingualism (Council of Europe, 1996, 2001, 2018). Methodologically, I explore participants’ life journeys via narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Clandinin, 2019) and analyze their collected language profiles, memoirs and interviews. My presentation will point out the participants’ increased agency, improved relationships with others and a sense of openness towards other cultures. My findings may offer parents, language learners, teachers, policy makers, and researchers insights and tools into navigating plurilingual learners’ journeys at home, in schools, other educational institutions, and academia. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
68 | Paper | PERSPECTIVE TRANSFORMATION THROUGH THE ARTS: Insights from a long-term research | Natassa Raikou, Alexis Kokkos | While the emancipatory potential of aesthetic experience has been extensively explored in the transformative learning (TL) literature, there has been little discussion so far on how to harness it in educational settings. To address this gap, this paper presents the method Transformative Learning through Aesthetic Experience (TLAE). Serving as a roadmap for exploring artworks in educational programs, TLAE includes seven stages, each of which responds to an operational question guiding educators from formulating appropriate art-based strategies to meet their learners’ TL needs to evaluating TL outcomes and building upon them in future endeavors. As a way of illustration, the paper also discusses how TLAE was implemented within a three-year educational intervention, including a follow-up study on the long-term effects on the participants. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
69 | Paper | TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING THROUGH AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS IN ADULT EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS. PERSPECTIVES OF EDUCATORS AND LEARNERS | Ismini Kavallari, Francesco Claudio Ugolini | The purpose of this research is to explore the extent to which aesthetic experience, critical thinking and transformative learning contribute to the teaching of mathematics in programs aimed at adults. From the bibliographical research realized it has been found that, while there are studies on Adult Education through aesthetic experience in light of the Theory of Transformative Learning in various fields, research focusing on the subject of mathematics is limited and it usually explores the views of the learners. This is the reason why the need for an overall approach to the matter under consideration has arisen both from the students’ views and those of the educators. This need led to the creation of six research questions which were answered through a qualitative survey conducted in the spring of 2023. These questions refer to the initial adult experiences, knowledge and attitudes, in particular about the concept in which they were taught and, more generally, about mathematics, in the characteristics of the learning environment before and after the application of aesthetic experience to the teaching practice as well as the transformation of attitudes towards the subject of mathematics after didactic intervention through art in the educational process. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
70 | Paper | Developing Inclusive Practices to Galvanize Retention of Diverse Physician Trainees and Junior Faculty: A Transformative Learning Approach | Danielle McCullough, Ruth Gotian, Odinakachukwu Ehie | While medical school cohorts show increased diversity, faculty representation lags behind, posing a retention dilemma with potential patient health repercussions. This paper champions a transformative learning approach at the core of enhancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in academic medicine. Drawing upon the principles of transformative learning theory, this paper elucidates comprehensive strategies designed to catalyze change within academic medicine. It accentuates the paramount role of dialogue, reflection, and action in fostering inclusivity and belonging. This approach facilitates the engagement of both trainees and faculty in identity-centered discussions, amplifying the collective awareness of intersectionalities. At the heart of this solution is the pivotal concept of mentorship, a linchpin in retaining underrepresented in medicine (URiM) trainees and faculty. In tandem, the paper emphasizes combatting the "minority tax" through shared responsibility in URiM recruitment and DEI initiatives, reframing the narrative to prevent undue burdening. By implementing these transformative strategies, institutions not only nurture a profound sense of belonging and counteract impostor syndrome but also advance the realm of responsible patient care. While the trajectory towards URiM retention is inherently long-term, the impetus for immediate, transformative action paves a pathway toward cultivating diverse and equitable environments in academic healthcare. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
71 | Paper | Adult Lifelong Learning Communities of Action to Enhance Environmental Literacy, Through Transformative Learning | Eleni Vallianatou-Voutsina, Savvatou Tsolakidou | Improving adult environmental literacy is crucial to achieving the sustainability of the planet. The literature review demonstrates that adult lifelong learning and the development of critical thinking of the learners through reflective dialogue, experiential learning, and self-directed learning development in the framework of learning communities could be a solution for radical change of the human resource acting at local and global level. Environmental literacy in learning communities include all three factors of transformative learning: the knowledge and skills acquired through experience; the attitudes, which are the product of effective learning, derived from the emotions evoked by an event; and the behaviors activated, leading the individual to make decisions and act in a positive way. By observing a sample of a learning community of eight women in the municipality of Holargos (Athens, Greece), working on environmental sustainability issues, the present research demonstrates how effective can be the active learning of citizens in the framework of learning communities. Mezirow’s theory on transformative learning steps contribute to the empowerment of individuals to build their own learning communities, and learn to be tolerant, accept the diversities, and role-model democratic values for a sustainable future. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
72 | Paper | Rethinking the adult educator for our times: moving from disorientating dilemmas to transformative action | Melanie Lenehan | We live in challenging times. Many writers and international organisations and agencies have pondered the rethinking or transformation of education in this context, but very few consider the role adult education past the abstract notion of lifelong learning and even less have considered the role of the adult educator. This paper will take the broad social context of the social/climate crises (Briadotti's ‘Posthuman Convergence’) and explore and rethink the role of the adult educator in contributing to the transformative learning necessary to address this. How should the role of the adult educator be rethought to contribute to achieving a liveable, more sustainable and just world? Mezirow describes the work of the adult educator to “create protected learning environments in which the conditions of social democracy necessary for transformative learning are fostered”. (2000: 26,31) If adult educators are to continue to create these protected learning environments in challenging times, this paper proposes that rethinking of the adult educator is necessary. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
73 | Paper | Aligning Transformative Learning and Action Research to Re-Evaluate Structures | Tammy Rosner | This paper outlines the findings, insights, and implications of an action research (AR) study within a university system that utilizes transformative learning to explore unexamined administrative practices. The study examined how introducing inclusive and equitable practices in study abroad may change study abroad advisors' perspectives regarding their current practices, which may affect Black students' low participation rates. While most studies involving study abroad practices concentrate on student transformative outcomes; this study focused on staff, faculty, and administrative structures. The study aimed to introduce study abroad advisors to information regarding inclusive practices and then engage in discourse and reflections guided by transformative pedagogies. Engaging in three distinct cycles, this AR study based all interventions on transformative pedagogies, Mezirow's (1994, 1997, 2000) theory on perspective transformation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
74 | Paper | “Some witchcraft you’ve done in the past twelve months!”: An exploration of the transformative value of learning through the arts in professional education. | Sarah Williamson | This paper reports on a qualitative investigation of the transformative value and impact of learning through the arts in professional education. Conducted over three academic years in a UK university, methodology included a visual narrative charting the research journey. The study found arts-based pedagogy created an invitation which offered protection, pleasure and play, freedom and liberation and the opportunity for self-expression. The capacity of the arts to ‘puncture’, awaken and enable vivid memory and recall was revealed, together with an immediacy of impact. Arts-based teaching and learning was found to illuminate and be a catalyst for deep and reflective thinking. It promoted learning in the affective domain and the development of critical consciousness, leading to transformative growth and change. The research found that transformative learning can occur through critical witness and response to art, and does not require students to engage in the making or creating of art. An educator does not need to be a creative arts practitioner to teach through the arts. The study concludes that arts-based teaching and learning can make an enriching, dynamic and significant contribution to professional education, and that through arts-based pedagogy, transformative growth, learning and change can be fostered, stimulated, and realised. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
75 | Paper | Transformative Learning through the Aesthetic Experience and beyond, Transformative Learning as an Aesthetic Experience. A “meeting” between Mezirow and Aristoteles. | Maria Karakou, Martha Logothetou, Maria Papadopoulou | The present proposal attempts to contribute to the constructive dialogue that continues to develop around Mezirow's Transformation Theory, approaching the transformative process, on the one hand through the aesthetic experience and on the other hand as an aesthetic experience. The subject is explored both theoretically and practically, based on the conclusions drawn from three doctoral theses. First, Logothetou (2024) highlights the emotional dimension of transformative learning through the investigation of Kokkos' method which is based on the utilization of aesthetic experience (Kokkos, 2021). Second, Karakou (2024) reveals how emerged emotions goes hand in hand with critical reflection by using Kokkos’ method in practice. Finally, Papadopoulou (2024), based on the perspective of the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, sheds light on in the way emotions emerge and function in ancient Greek tragedy and, by extension, in contact with any meaningful work of art. Combining the conclusions of the three studies, we argue that the utilization of Kokkos’ method promotes critical reflection alongside the expression and management of emerging emotions. Accordingly, the transformative process can be seen as an aesthetic experience. The identification of points of convergence of Aristotle’s ideas with Transformation Theory, supports the Theory’s timelessness. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
76 | Paper | Encompassing Transformation: A Holistic Approach to Assessing Learning in Adult Basic Education | Monika Kastner | This paper presents an integrated model for assessing and validating learning in adult basic education (ABE), emphasizing transformative, formative, and summative dimensions. Grounded in critical pedagogy and a commitment to social justice, the model advocates for pedagogical approaches that assess and validate learning experiences that lead to profound personal and social changes in disadvantaged and vulnerable adult learners. The development of this model stems from a deep commitment to ABE as a practice that empowers and emancipates individuals, addressing the limitations of current assessment methods by holistically incorporating the transformative, formative, and summative dimensions of learning. Serving as the foundation for a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project, the model engages ABE practitioners and learners in collaboratively developing a comprehensive framework and exploring transformative learning experiences. An exploratory inquiry with ABE practitioners into a typology of transformative learning processes and outcomes elucidates the practical implications of the model and guides the CBPR project. Discussions highlight the implications for policies, program designs, and the validation of non-formal and informal learning, which aim to promote long-term effectiveness and societal impact in adult education. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
77 | Paper | Bildung and Transformative Learning: Some “Traces” in the Self-Development of Two Female Figures in the Late 18th Century, Sophie and Gertrud | Andrea Potestio, Alice Locatelli | Since the second half of the 18th century, the category of Bildung has acquired a greater semantic complexity, referring a process of an in-depth transformation, that involves each person during their entire life. Starting from this awareness, the contribution will focus on two female figures, Sophie and Gertrud, protagonists of two well-known pedagogical novels (Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, ou De l’éducation, 1762 and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s Lienhard und Gertrud: Ein Buch für das Volk, 1781-1787), to highlight their personal process of transformation as self-development. By focusing on some aspects ‒ such as the role of critical reflection on experience and the importance of a knowledge derived from everyday life ‒ this paper aims to illustrate the close relationship between the categories of Bildung and Transformative Learning. Indeed, by analysing some of the episodes described in these novels, it is possible to bring out some traces of the transformative dimension that characterises their Bildung, conceived as a fundamental dimension that enables Transformative Learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
78 | Paper | Transformative learning from a (gender) queer perspective | Constanze Ertel, Saskia Eschenbacher | This paper seeks to examine the transformative learning processes of adult (gender) queer individuals. In the case of (gender) queer adults living in a binary, heteronormative society that excludes their identity and/or sexuality, the transformative learning process of Jack Mezirow (1991) may not be sufficient. Due to its connections to the women's movement, it may not apply to (gender) queer realities and the learning processes. This leads to the aim to explore what tools and processes (gender) queer adults employ to resist and navigate in heteronormative, binary societies. How is Mezirow’s process adapted? Additionally, it is to explore how Mezirow’s approach may be built on heteronormative privileges. To answer these questions, five to six expert interviews in the year 2023 were conducted and evaluated by qualitative content analysis, according to Mayring. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
79 | Paper | Information Resources as Tools of Transformation: An Interview Study | Carli Lowe | Aligning select phases of Mezirow’s Critical Premise Reflection with an understanding of Information Encountering as described in Human Information Behavior research, implies a model for Transformative Information Encountering (TIE). Building on my 2022 paper, Promoting Transformative Encounters in Libraries and Archives, this paper presents findings from fourteen interviews conducted to explore individual experiences with TIE. With directed analysis of transcripts, themes emerged including the potential for a college campus to serve as a community of co-questioners, a lack of TIE directly connected to traditional information institutions (i.e. libraries, archives, and museums), the potential impact of certain types of information resources over others, and the importance of transformative information sharing in the context of close trusting relationships. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
80 | Paper | Cultural Preparedness of Adult Educators: A Changing Dynamic in Higher Education through Transformative Learning | Moira McDonald | Numbers of international undergraduate students enrolled in Canadian universities and colleges has grown from 22,000 in the year 2000 to 2.2 million in 2022. While international students embark on their post-secondary journey of discovery, we as educators also embark on a journey of discovery to explore how prepared we are to meet the international learning community's needs. This research was guided by Mezirow's transformative learning theory, focused on generating understanding around cultural preparedness in learning communities and the tools needed to support the educating community. For this inquiry, I drew from the transformative learning theoretical framework, guided by a qualitative research methodological approach and methods to utilize a three-phased research design of topic-based focus groups and interviews. In this study, I drew from seminal work and insights on culture. I defined a nuanced definition of cultural preparedness in adult learning settings, specifically at a public university in Western Canada. The findings suggest that cultural preparedness is different for everyone and that transformation is not linear or as expected. Outcomes from this study may further help educators promote best practices related to internationalization at home in the 21st century while disrupting how we understand transformation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
81 | Paper | Navigating Change: A longitudinal study of how Future Self-Guides Shape International Students' Motivations and Perceived Transformation at a Sino-Foreign Joint-Venture University | Emmanuelle Chiocca, Xin Zhang | China has shown increased engagement in International Higher Education (IHE), an interest motivated by a tremendous demand among both Chinese and international students. Conducted at a full-scale Sino-foreign joint-venture university (JVU) in China, this longitudinal study explores the motivation of international students for applying to and attending Sino-foreign JVU in China. A second related question investigates what they expect to experience. The third question addresses perceived changes in terms of depth, and breadth, which students experienced throughout their four years of study. Mixed-methods data collection and analyses suggest that international students at a Sino-foreign joint-venture university were motivated by a strong desire to distinguish themselves for integrative, international signaling, and instrumental purposes, and expected and even intended to transform themselves as a result of studying and living in an intercultural environment in China. Insights inform us on the motivations, expectations, and perceptions of change of international students attending JVUs in China, highlighting the centrality of the desire to distinguish themselves and to change in ways they already value. Beyond theoretical implications on transformative learning, this study offers practical implications to better support international students to help them cultivate their visions of possible future selves. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
82 | Paper | Applying Transformational Learning Within Graduate Education: Adult Learners Using Their Experiences to Learn | Carmine Gibaldi | Transformational Learning is defined as learning that includes more far-reaching change in the learner than other kinds of learning, especially learning experiences which shape the learner and produce a significant impact, or paradigm shift, which has an impact on the learners future experiences (Clark, 1993). This type of learning approach as Mezirow (1981, 1994, & 1997) developed and discussed creates a teaching/learning environment that allows the “adult learner” to use their past experiences and reflections on making connections to/with their present learning experience. This paper will discuss and address how Transformational Learning best benefits students/Adult Learners within graduate school environments. The paper/presentation is based on the authors 25 years of experience working with graduate students of Business that are also employed (full-time or part-time). Some are in the professions of medicine, law, engineering (holding Ph.D.’s), etc. The author will not only discuss how to best create teaching/learning environments to use Transformational Learning but will also include the adult learners’ feedback regarding the process, learning outcomes, and relationships that were built during the learning period (semester). | ||||||||||||||||||||||
83 | Paper | Embracing Transformative Learning in Teacher Education: the challenge of Italian Teaching and Learning Centers | Francesco Magni, Virginia Capriotti | This proposal explores the influence of transformative learning on adult education, particularly in the context of teacher education, and its integration into the emerging role of Teaching and Learning Centers (TLCs) within Italian universities. In the context of Italy’s educational reforms, driven by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRP), the imperative to transform teacher education in Italy comes to the fore. The establishment of TLCs within universities, as mandated by Law No. 79/2022, represents a crucial step towards comprehensive teacher development. TLCs are pivotal in fostering environments where transformative learning principles thrive. In this context, the pedagogical approach of transformative learning has the potential to challenge conventional teaching methods and promote critical thinking, empathy and self-reflection. Through the lens of Mezirow’s theories, this paper examines the complex dynamics of adult learning, where skill acquisition is intertwined with personal growth and worldview reconstruction. Critical self-reflection is at the heart of this process, driving an authentic transformation of perspectives. This transformation could play a central role in the implementation of the Italian teacher education reforms and in the activities of TLCs. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
84 | Paper | “Staying with the trouble”: Participatory visual research as transformative learning with young women | Naydene De Lange | Gender inequality and gender-based violence (GBV) remain a trouble worldwide, particularly so in South Africa, making ‘staying with the trouble’ crucial in addressing it in every possible way. In this presentation I draw on research with 14 first year women students studying education at a South African university, as an example of participatory visual research processes facilitating transformative learning. I take the theoretical stance that transformative learning is about personal transformation as well as about social change, as individual and social transformation are inherently linked. The research question I ask is: How might participatory visual research be used to facilitate transformative learning? Participatory visual methodology with various participatory visual methods such as drawing, photovoice, participatory video, and collage were used over the ten years of researching with the young women - enabling them to explore, reflect and critique their situated experiences of gender inequality and gender-based violence. New perspectives on gender inequality and gender-based violence enabled them to try to live their lives differently and to be agents of social change in their communities. In this presentation I explore and critique transformative learning as enabled by participatory visual methodologies in the context of gender inequality and GBV. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
85 | Paper | Collaborative Autoethnography as a Way to Negotiate, Survive, and Thrive in Academia | Mitsunori Misawa, Juanita Johnson-Bailey | This presentation describes how two faculty members have used collaborative autoethnography as a research process to examine their educational practices. In the process, they learned to negotiate the academic culture and understand how to survive and thrive in the academy. The presenters used reflexivity to explicitly present and explore their connections to the career dilemmas in higher education (Pillow, 2003), such as managing the promotion and tenure process, surviving being bullied. The scholars used autoethnography to explore the dilemmas with the intent to make explicit any inherent biases that they brought to the research, hoping to lay bare any power dynamics. Using journals, teaching reflections, interviews and personal communications with students and colleagues, they critiqued problems that occurred in their teaching praxes and in their careers and used their positions on the margins to not only speak truth to power, but to open up a dialogue in the field that would engender future research and transformative learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
86 | Paper | How Japanese Managers in the Information Technology Industry Experience Cultural Diversity in the Workplace: Host Culture Perceptions in Light of Constructive-Developmental Theory toward Transformation | Kaori Mizukoshi | This paper is an abstract of a qualitative study that investigated how individual managers on the cultural host side experienced emerging cultural diversity within the workplace in their home country of Japan in light of their epistemological capacities, i.e., orders of consciousness as defined within constructive-developmental theory (Kegan, 1994, 2000). Data was collected through two types of interviews with eight Japanese managers in the information technology industry: in-depth interviews to learn about their experience in workplace cultural diversity, and Subject-Object Interviews to learn about their orders of consciousness (Kegan, 1994, 2000; Lahey et al., 2011). The eight managers demonstrated self-authoring capacity in three variations and reported the effects of linguistic and cultural differences about their working experiences with non-Japanese (i.e., “foreign”) colleagues. They also described newly acquired perceptions about their own cultural assumptions. Furthermore, how they perceived the differences and/or how they acted with the new cultural awareness varied; and their orders of consciousness appeared to be one of the factors that influenced those perceptions and actions. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
87 | Paper | The Transformative Power of Sustainable Learning: Facilitating Teacher Professional Development in Displacement, Refugee, and Crisis Settings | Diana Woolis, Oula Abu-Amsha, SARA Kassab | This paper considers transformative learning (TL) in the context of teacher professional development in displacement, refugee, and crisis settings (DRCS). It demonstrates a broadened view of the “ideal conditions” that facilitate or impede transformative learning (Mezirow, 1997) created by the Sustainable Learning Framework (SLF) (Woolis, 2017). Transformative Learning (TL) in DRCS must attend to collective trauma (Hirschberger, 2018) resulting from catastrophic events that create a crisis of meaning for individuals and learning ecosystems. It must consider the whole scale triggering of disorienting dilemmas (Young et al., 2022). Various traditional and contemporary theories inform the SLF to address current educational challenges. The practice-oriented SLF supports complex and nuanced learning to deal with meaning-making in a world where “not knowing” is the new normal (Eschenbacher & Fleming, 2020). The paper documents teacher professional development in Niger, Kenya, and Lebanon and shows how the SLF created the conditions necessary for teacher transformative learning. The authors report from their roles in the learning ecosystem: a teacher, project manager, organization leader, and SLF architect. The project introduced Quality Holistic Learning (QHL) to educators supporting their students and their peer teachers, centering them as leaders and content co-creators and structuring learning within a community of practice. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
88 | Paper | Exploring Transformative Learning Through Teacher Education Programs: Insights from a Case Study | Cecilia Bibbo, Giuseppe Carci | The transformative learning (TL) theory was originally developed in the 1980s by Jack Mezirow to describe meaningful learning processes that occur when learners connect theory with practice. TL theory also emphasizes the student's active role. While scholars agree that student-educator interaction plays a crucial role in facilitating TL, questions remain concerning the educator’s role in planning a transformational learning experience and the educator’s responsibility for its impact (Baumgartner, 2001). Multiple curricula for TL educators have been designed over the years. This research examines the role that accreditors of education programs have played in the development of TL. A case study has been designed to understand the impact that the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC) had on the development of innovative transformative education programs for teachers in Scotland. The accreditation criteria developed and adopted by GTS were evaluated against three of the four key areas defined by UNESCO (2022) for transforming education. This qualitative research highlights the role of teachers in TL, the importance of schools' autonomy in curriculum design, and the impact of accreditation in the advancement of TL. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
89 | Paper | The Cultural Evolution and Transformative Learning Perspective in K-pop: Mamamoo | Yang hwan Choi | This article explores the evolution of K-pop, highlighting its shift from contemporary Korean musical styles infused with Western influences to a leading cultural force. K-pop's global impact extends beyond music, fostering cultural conversation and influencing worldwide interest in Korean culture. This study adopts a structural perspective, utilizing transformative learning and liminality theories to understand K-pop's role in cultural fusion and changes in gender roles and identity, exemplified by the group Mamamoo. K-pop's trajectory, paralleling Korea's democratic progress, illustrates transformative learning and embodies liminality, suggesting its continued influence on global cultural narratives. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
90 | Paper | “Transformative overture(s) to the caged bird's song of freedom. Educational approaches "intra muros"” | Labrina Gioti, Dimitra Markou, Katerina Toka, Kalliopi Gerostergiou | The purpose of this paper is to explore the educational philosophy, learning theories, and practices 7 adult educators adopt as teachers in 6 Second Chance Schools that operate in Detention Facilities. In particular, we explore whether their understandings are grounded in Transformative Theory and/or Critical Pedagogy. That is: a) if their theories and practices promote transformative learning, in the light of Mezirow's theory or critical transformative learning, as approached by Critical Adult Educators Freire and Brookfield, b) if their teaching aims to provoke transformation and what kind of transformation, c) whether and how they detect any transformative effects on their incarcerated learners. As evident from the above, the theoretical framework of our research is based on the work of Mezirow, Brookfield, and Freire, who have emphasized concepts such as transformation, critical pedagogy, critical awareness, and pedagogy of hope. The research is qualitative, conducted with in-depth interviews, and is in progress, expected to be completed by spring 2024, depending on the particular employment conditions of the sample. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
91 | Paper | Contextualizing and transforming child rights education - A decolonizing, participatory project in Canada and Uganda | Shelley Jones, Kathleen Manion | Transformative Education in child rights education can inspire personal and societal change for children and teachers in schools, as well as the larger communities. We present findings from an ongoing five-year decolonizing, participatory action research project which asks what processes support primary school educators in different contexts - a city in Western Canada, a village in rural Southwestern Uganda, and two towns with large South Sudanese populations in Northern and Central Uganda - achieve impactful contextually-relevant child rights education that empowers children to learn about and exercise their rights. Considering findings from 36 teachers in 15 schools in three Ugandan sites and eight teachers in four schools in Canada, we reflect on how to best deconstruct our assumptions about what children need, want, and experience to truly listen to and learn from them. Working towards a decolonizing research approach, we discuss how the study has given attention to and taken into account diversity of knowledges, cultures, and practices across the three sites, as well as relate divergent, factors across these heterogenous contexts that impede and support the full realization of child rights so that we are better able to support transformative change that cultivates children’s empowerment and agency. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
92 | Paper | Emotionally Informed Transformative Learning: Feelings are scattered pins across the landscape of learning, turning on a point of possibility, it has always been me. | Fiona Wilson | This paper tentatively presents an epistemologically audacious theory that pre-reflective emotions are what transform in transformative learning, thereby challenging long accepted Cartesian duality (Descartes 1972) with the intention to make good trouble for transformative learning theory. In order for something to be perceived as good, I stray away here from notions of morality (Engstrom 1992) and, in line with the premise of my research, posit good as in feeling good about something from an embodied perspective where a joyfulness is attained as the individual ‘moves towards an optimal state’ (Wilson 2023 p. 145). In relation to trouble, I draw upon Harroway’s (2016 p. 18) definition whereby I hope to playfully ‘stir up potent response’ to the ‘potentional’ (Stein 2000 p. 68), ‘as well as settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places’ (Harroway 2016 p. 18) through engagement with the poems and fictional extracts representing the findings of my phenomenological enquiry into the perceived lived experience of emotionally informed learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
93 | Paper | ADHD and families: transformative learning and parenting support | Antonello Mura, Daniele Bullegas | Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent patterns of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity that interfere with daily functioning and development (APA, 2022). Educating a hyperactive child disrupts the balance of family relationships. Indeed, ADHD can profoundly alter family structures by triggering intense emotions that are challenging to manage and by making interactions complex and problematic (Anastopoulos et al., 2009; Bullegas et al., 2023; Theule et al., 2011). Through participatory action research, this study explores the transformative potential of Parental Reflective Groups (PRG) as an innovative approach to provide parenting support for families dealing with ADHD (Bullegas & Mura, 2023; Mura & Bullegas, 2021). PRGs represent a methodological approach, aimed at facilitating critical reflection on parenting practices. Twenty parents of children with ADHD participated in a six-month PRG program that included pre-training and post-training semi-structured interviews to detect changes in frame of references (e.g. premises and meanings about parental identity, ADHD, parent-child relationship, etc.) and educational practices. The findings underscore the potential of PRGs in assisting participants in critically analyzing their perspectives and supporting them in a process of personal growth and empowerment. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
94 | Paper | Individuation, socialisation and transformation – the three dimensions of education | Minni Matikainen, Perttu Männistö | Transformative learning has been typically understood as a specific kind of learning where humans’ ways of thinking, meaning making, and perceiving the world, others, and self, change drastically and irreversibly. However, we consider transformation not only as its own demarcated way of learning but as an essential and indistinguishable part of the concept of education itself. Traditionally, two intertwined dimensions have been associated with education: socialisation and individuation. Socialisation refers to the process of becoming part of the larger community, whereas individuation can be described as becoming oneself under the current system. These two processes ensure that society can keep functioning, when new individuals become suitably integrated into the existing society while retaining the possibility for personally meaningful, unique ways of being and living. We argue, however, that if education is understood to include only these two aspects, the concept of education is left incomplete. Following, we state that an element of transcendence is an essential part of education. Therefore, we propose that transformation should be considered as the third main aspect of education. The element of transformation opens the possibility of change and a genuine transcendence of the status quo for both individuation and socialisation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
95 | Paper | Healing our hearts and our planet: The role of transformative learning | Katrina Rogers, Leni Wildflower | Taking action towards healing the planet will demand nothing less than a transformation in the way that humans interact with the natural world and with each other. Since industrialization, humanity’s progress has relied on the domination of nature, which has led to unsustainable processes. We apply Mezirow’s phases of transformative learning as a framework to encompass key insights of eco-philosophers, Thomas Berry, Molly Brown, Joanna Macy, Karen O’Brien, Rebecca Solnit, and others, in confronting the climate crisis and moving from emotion to action. Ecophilosophers concentrate primarily on the emotional impact of climate change and the role emotions play in disabling us from constructively confronting what is happening on our planet, with responses such as fear, anxiety and depression. Combining theories of the climate crisis and our reaction to it with Mezirow’s transformative learning paradigm reveals new insights and suggests new and creative ways of taking action. These connections provide the basis for an urgently needed framework that will enable adult learners to confront their disorientation around planetary suffering, to reflect critically, and to overcome social and psychic barriers to action. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
96 | Paper | Pre-service teachers’ transformative learning during placement in underdeveloped rural areas: a living experience | Lufi Kartika Sari | Transformative learning is an experience-based learning that focuses on exploring unfamiliar environments. Exposing pre-service teachers to teaching in unfamiliar environments can enrich their competences. To date, there has been limited research on exposing pre-service teachers' living experience in underdeveloped rural areas. This study aims to understand pre-service teachers’ transformative learning through their living experience during teaching placement in underdeveloped rural areas, and its impacts on them. Forty-one pre-service teachers, who come from elsewhere and were placed for one year in underdeveloped rural areas of Indonesia, participated in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings show that pre-service teachers engaged in disorientation, reflection and exploration of new roles and actions, leading to transformative learning. Disorientation occurred due to encountering challenges while living there. In response, pre-service teachers explored their new roles and actions. Through reflection during their interviews, they were also able to derive meaning from their experiences. Their transformative learning contributes to the participants’ personal development, improvement in intercultural skills, and raising awareness about the importance of conserving nature. This study details how underdeveloped rural areas can be a powerful learning context for pre-service teachers. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
97 | Paper | Epistemologies of Transformative Learning | Chad Hoggan, Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert | Theories of transformative learning (TL) have embedded in them different epistemologies. For any given theory, an important question is: When people engage in transformative processes, what criteria guide (or should guide) their decisions about what to believe and how to exist and act in the world? This is a question of epistemology, an essential inquiry that needs to be asked of any theory of TL. The role of epistemology in TL needs further investigation and elaboration, particularly concerning the implicit assumptions about the source of knowledge relied upon to guide the TL process. This paper explores four different epistemologies that can be seen in the TL literature: rational thinking, subconscious expressions, un-conceptualized “felt” experience, and functionality. For each, it highlights the benefits, as well as the lacunae, dangers, and limitations. This paper demonstrates how and why there needs to be greater attention to the implicit assumptions about epistemology embedded in TL theories, and suggests that the inclusion of multiple epistemologies, in a sort of triangulation, may be a fruitful way forward. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
98 | Paper | Portrayal of Personal Transformation in Indian Feature Films | Tanuj Negi, Chetna Monga | This study explores the educational potential of Indian feature films as immersive case studies for fostering transformative learning in classrooms. Drawing upon transformative learning theory and media studies, the research examines thirty-nine select Indian films spanning eight decades and four languages, depicting journeys of personal transformation. Utilizing a grounded theory approach, the study identifies thematic patterns and constructs an explanatory model of personal transformation. Through systematic analysis, the paper demonstrates the efficacy of using Indian cinema as a pedagogical tool for inspiring reflection and growth in learners. By bridging the gap between theory and practice, educators can leverage the power of cinematic narratives to create engaging learning experiences that promote self-awareness and social change. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse on transformative learning and underscores the importance of incorporating diverse cultural perspectives into educational curricula. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
99 | Paper | Quantum Leaps: Rethinking Transformative Learning through Posthuman Theories | Trisha Barefield | Quantum physics has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the universe. This paper investigates how quantum-informed posthumanist theories can inspire new perspectives on the complex and entangled nature of personal and societal transformation. Situated in the posthumanist theories of Barad (2007) and Bennett (2009), this paper explores the question: what is transformation if we are constantly in a state of becoming? Approaching transformative learning as a multifaced metatheory (Hoggan, 2016), I argue that transformative learning should be viewed as part of an entangled flow where under certain conditions a “quantum leap” (Plauborg, 2018) occurs, transcending the boundaries of individualized subjects and impacting other beings. Examples will be provided from research on collaborative approaches to emergent systems design in a classroom setting. This conference paper will set the stage for an in-depth exploration of the interplay between quantum-informed posthumanist theory and transformative learning. By reconsidering the complex nature of transformation and the potential for quantum leaps, I aim to shed light on the emergent and entangled aspects of transformative learning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
100 | Paper | Transformative Learning as a Spectrum of Change: Understanding Schoolteachers' Experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic | Līva Goba-Medne | The proposed paper explores the concept of transformative learning as a spectrum of change intertwined with other types of learning, rather than a necessarily binary occurrence that is either present or absent. This stance is based on the findings of a study of the experiences of schoolteachers during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on how the pandemic-induced transformations in teachers’ work were reflected in their learning experiences. Narrative interviews were conducted in 2022, encompassing three waves of pandemic experience, and were analyzed using the documentary method of interpretation. The findings depict transformative learning experiences of teachers as a spectrum, ranging from regression, distorted learning and non-learning up to deeply transformational learning experiences. |