Self-Formation and Transformative Learning

An Intellectual Spanking

Newman rightly cites the proliferation of widely disparate and uneven ways in which transformative learning has been interpreted and used. Taylor (2005) argues that we now have seven different “lenses” through which to study transformative learning, some reflecting more individualistic perspectives, with others locating the experience within broader sociocultural points of view (Dirkx, 1998; Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). Its use is often poorly grounded in its underlying theoretical foundations. I recently received an advertisement for a new book by Margery Ginsberg (2011), titled Transformative Professional Learning: A System to Enhance Teacher and Student Motivation. It discusses interesting and even potentially innovative approaches to help students become good teachers. However, the book is illustrative of a central problem for the field; much of what is referred to as transformative learning seems little more than another way to talk about learning and change. Gaining more information, learning a new skill, developing a new or different attitude, or even acquiring a new role or occupation may reflect effective learning experiences, but they do not alone indicate the kind of experiences intended by serious scholars of transformative learning.

This lack of theoretical discipline has almost certainly undermined the credibility of the concept itself and further blurred its meaning. Yet, in focusing on the erosion of meaning associated with this proliferation, Newman risks throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water. In his article, however, Newman alludes to a central feature of transformative learning, that of consciousness development, which helps us see how transformative learning might represent a distinct form of adult learning.

Transformative Learning as a Shift in Consciousness

In their own ways, Freire (1970) and Mezirow (1978) described learning as a process of constructing or reconstructing meaning and intimately bound up with a person’s growth and development. To these more rationally based accounts, Boyd and others (Boyd, 1991b; Boyd & Myers, 1988; Dirkx, 2012) have focused on how unconscious emotional dynamics of individuals and groups can both facilitate and obstruct these meaning-making processes. These accounts reflect complex processes of elaborating and remaking ways of understanding ourselves and our being in the world, characterizing what Newman (2012) and others refer to as consciousness.

The learners shift from an unthinking, unspoken acceptance of things as they are to an articulate and passionate participation in a world they can change. . . . In the process of coming to see our world authentically—naming it for what is—we achieve a heightened form of consciousness in which we feel and we think and we do with clarity and intensity. (p. 43)

As we construct and reconstruct of the meaning our life experiences, we become more conscious.

Consciousness development may and often does reflect primarily a reinforcement and elaboration of current ways of thinking and making sense of our sense of self (Merriam & Clark, 1991). As a beginning professor, my sense of self was largely influenced by earlier experiences, particularly those of a graduate student and relationships with my professors. Over time, my understanding of the complexities of the professor role grew and I gradually felt more efficacious in addressing the learning needs and interests of my students. I also became more aware of how the role provided expression of who I was and how the broader social context influenced this emerging sense of self.

Much of what we might regard as personally meaningful learning proceeds in this manner, and our sense of self and the world is deepened. At times, however, learning may be associated with a kind of overthrow of an existing way of making sense of ourselves and our being in the world (Merriam & Clark, 1991; Mezirow, 1991), a sense of meaning that, in Daloz’s (1986) words, has become increasingly frayed. These kinds of learning experiences reflect dramatic shifts in consciousness. In Parker Palmer’s (1998) “Courage to Teach” program, teachers often experience a sense of renewal in their profession. However, some realize that, in their heart of hearts, they are not really teachers after all (Intrator, 2007). Through this program, the teachers begin to see a fundamentally different sense of who they are as a person and how they might continue to contribute to the world, albeit no longer in the role of a school teacher. This awareness represents a fundamental shift in their sense of self and their being in the world.

As Newman suggests, such shifts are also often fostered through the context of academic study. In a community college, semester-long reentry program, dislocated factory workers went from being “scared to death” in their orientations to perceiving themselves in their graduation ceremony as confident and academically competent college students. They felt capable of pursuing courses of study that would help them change careers and possibly their lives (Dirkx & Dang, 2009). Most of the students in this program redefined in a fundamental way their sense of self and their being in the world, reflecting what Merriam and Clark (1991) described as transformative meaning-making experiences and what others have characterized as qualitative shifts in consciousness development (Gould, 1978; Kegan, 1994; Perry, 1970).

The major theoretical approaches in transformative learning (Boyd & Myers, 1988; Daloz, 1986; Kegan, 1994; Mezirow, 1991; O’Sullivan, Morrell, & O’Connor, 2002) all conceptualize experiences and processes that fundamentally challenge some aspect of our being in the world, focusing on the complex processes that are associated with these dramatic shifts in consciousness and the sense of self emerging from them.

Transformative Learning Theory as a Critical Theory of Self

Ironically, Newman uses the idea of consciousness development to argue against transformative learning as a distinctly different kind of adult learning. For the most part, he frames consciousness development from a sociological perspective, reflecting the influence of critical social theory and postmodernism (Brookfield, 2005). Newman (2012) remarks, “We develop our consciousness in the continual encounter between our self and the social and material world” (p. 42). Newman considers the self, its forms of learning, and the development of consciousness as largely arising from and supported by their social and material contexts. Quoting Marx and Engels, Newman points out, “It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness” (p. 42).

Newman suggests that at the heart of good learning is a change in consciousness of the person (or group, organization, or society). Little is gained by referring to certain forms of this change as transformative. Persons are part of a larger collective, the structures and forces of which influence and shape our sense of consciousness. Newman suggests that even Mezirow’s (1978) initial observations of the changes associated with women returning to community college can be explained by focusing on the Zeitgeist of the times. But this position does not fully account for the psychic dynamics associated with self-formation.

Many adult education scholars and practitioners have, for some time, framed learning and consciousness development within critical theory (Brookfield, 2005). Rarely, if at all, do these writers acknowledge that this tradition also includes a critical theory of self (Geuss, 1981). In discussing the development of self-knowledge, Habermas argues that self-reflection “includes two movements equally: the cognitive, and the affective and motivational. . . . Critique terminates in a transformation of the affective-motivational basis, just as it begins with the need for practical transformation” (Habermas, 1971, p. 236). Habermas employs psychoanalytic thought to further develop a deeper understanding of what is implied by consciousness and the process of transformation (Bernstein, 1976). This approach to the transformation of the “affective-motivational basis” is characteristic of Mezirow’s (1991) attention to the psychological dimensions of perspective transformation, as well as more psychodynamically oriented studies of transformative learning (Boyd, 1991b; Boyd & Myers, 1988; Dirkx, 2012). Newman, however, provides little explicit acknowledgement of the innate characteristics of the human psyche that are the foundation for a critical theory of self and the dynamics that characterize its relationships and interactions with the outer world—a process I refer to as self-formation.

Transformative Learning as Self-Formation

Self-formation represents the heart of all liberal learning and perhaps much of what is regarded as vocational or work-related learning as well (Whyte, 2002). It reflects the ancient Greek belief that the purpose of education—educare—is to bring out that which is within. It refers to the process by which education helps realize, in relation to the outer world, the inner qualities or make-up of the person. As transformative learning, self-formation involves both a critique of self as it has come to be known within particular sociocultural contexts and the nurturing of that which is innate to the human psyche. The former seeks to address self-deceptive practices and the latter helps encourage the unfolding of a more integrated and authentic self.

Critique of self represents learning that results in consciousness of self-deceptive practices. It involves the recognition and naming of various ways in which we come to hold, through the hegemonic influences of sociocultural structures (Brookfield, 2005), beliefs and assumptions that are not fundamentally in our best interests. In this form of learning, we may also become conscious of the various ways that, through defense mechanisms such as denial or intellectualization, we refuse to recognize and address unconscious emotional conflicts that shape our behaviors and ways of understanding ourselves and our outer world. The dynamics involved in these processes are reflected in Mezirow’s (1991) elaboration of psychic distortions and how, through critical reflection, we may become more aware of their presence and influence in our lives.

Developing a deeper and more meaningful understanding of who we are as persons also involves recognizing and providing voice to more innate qualities. While adult education scholars working from a critical or postmodern perspective may consider the idea of a core, unitary self as passé and perhaps even “laughable” (Brookfield, 2005, p. 149), much of the post-Jungian scholarship represents a postmodern perspective (Clark & Dirkx, 2000; Dirkx, 2012), in which the “self” is understood as both multiplistic and unitary at the same time. In this sense, self-formation depicts, in part, a kind of learning through which we recognize and connect with our sense of vocation or calling, with our birthright gifts (Palmer, 2009). But these gifts are often packaged as multiple selves that represent semiautonomous psychic entities. Over the course of our lives and experiences, we can gradually recognize and establish more conscious relationships with these different selves. Jung referred to this process as individuation, in which we become “a unified but also unique personality, an undivided and integrated person” (Stein, 1998, p. 175). Transformative leaning aims for psychological wholeness through integration of conscious and unconscious and inner and outer aspects of our psyche.

In reality, the two processes of self-formation do not proceed independent of one another. Rather, they represent continuous, ongoing processes that are interrelated and integrated within self-formation and re-formation. Individuation “speaks directly to the interplay of conscious and unconscious, of outer and inner worlds” (Sonik, 2008, p. 97). By working on this relationship, individuals differentiate aspects of themselves and foster integrated connections among the various parts of their psyches. From time to time, this process manifests itself in a transformation of consciousness and of in our sense of self and being in the world.

Boyd (1991a) illustrates this process through a study of a student’s experiences (Mary) within the context of an academic course on group dynamics. A middle-aged woman, Mary’s early relationship with the group was tense and somewhat confrontational. As the group developed, Mary began to see how the group unconsciously reminded her of her mother, and some of the difficulties that she had experienced in that relationship. She began to realize how the group had come to be for her an image of a powerful containing mother, evoking within her emotions related to her relationship with her own mother. She understood how she was projecting these difficult inner forces onto the group and her relationship with it. While the explicit focus of this course was academic, the context evoked within Mary semiautonomous forces that influenced her awareness and consciousness of the group experience. Working through this emerging awareness was, for her and her group, a powerful example of transformative learning.

Conclusion

In his article, Newman correctly criticizes the field of transformative learning for conceptual and methodological looseness and conveys a vision of adult learning to which we as adult educators should aspire. His thoughtful critique should foster dialogue around how we are using this and related terms to characterize adult learning, and what is really meant by the idea of transformative learning.

I understand transformative learning to represent more of a stance toward the self-formative processes in which teaching and learning are deeply embedded. We can use this idea as a kind of lens to view and interpret the meaning of various experiences and images that occur within and arise out of our engagement with ideas, practices, people, organizations, and communities. These self-formative processes are continuous and ongoing in our lives, and as we struggle to understand various aspects of ourselves and our world, we deepen and broaden our consciousness and sense of meaning. Occasionally, they may manifest themselves in abrupt shifts in consciousness, rendering the transformative processes more visible and problematic. At times, even in academic study these self-formative processes spontaneously show up in consciousness as emotion-laden images and experiences. We should pay attention.