Innovations in Teaching Adult Education: Living History Museums and Transformative Learning in the University Classroom

Relational, Emotional, and Embodied Transformative Learning

As English and Irving (2012) argue in their discussion of women’s transformative learning, five factors—including personal relationships; embodied learning; emotions; positionalities of race, class, gender, ability, and so on; and creativity and the arts—are of critical importance. First, the development of trusting, authentic relationships and collective learning experiences are vital to transformative learning. Such relationships are built, for example, through group projects, exchanging of life narratives, respectful dialogue across difference, and opportunities for group and individual reflection. Second, bodies are important: the body can be “the impetus and the site of learning, creating change and enacting new possibilities” (English & Irving, 2012, p. 251). Learning yoga, tai chi, and meditation techniques, all kinds of sports, professional trades, dance, playing a musical instrument, drawing, quilting, pottery, and so on are all obvious examples where bodily learning is key. Embodied learning can also be employed to experience, analyze, and transform power relations related to race, gender, class, ability, and other forms of oppression, and to learn across cultures (Freiler, 2008). Third, emotions, both negative and positive, are key to transformative learning. Emotions should be named, given space, and carefully integrated into adult education. Emotional literacy and empathy for a “shared humanity and capacity for like-emotions and suffering” can be learning in part through a “pedagogy of emotion,” involving discomfort, hope, experiential learning, dialogue, and arts-based pedagogies (Walker & Palacios, 2016, p. 179). Fourth, learning related to race, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and intersections among these and other axes is important to transformative learning as well. These can form an explicit part of an adult education curriculum in many of the ways mentioned above: trust and relationship building, carefully facilitated dialogue across difference, life narratives, and so on. Finally, creativity and the arts support transformative learning through learning activities such as storytelling, music, and role-plays (English & Irving, 2012). The arts evoke emotions, excite our imagination, provoke us, call us to action, break boundaries, allow us to enter into difficult conversation, and help us heal and reflect (Lawrence, 2012).

Learning in Living History Museums

Living history museums tell stories. Visitors listen to these stories, see them, are physically immersed in them, and co-create them together with guides and other visitors. They enter recreated historical forts, colonial towns, Jesuit missions, Native American villages, coal mines, plantations and farming communities and imagine they have traveled into a different world. They talk with costumed people, they touch and try out strange tools and machines, watch activities such as blacksmithing, weaving, baking, and coopering, hear life stories and musical performances. They engage in hands-on activities such as gold panning, farming, cooking, art, music, and craft-making; they try on period clothing and sample typical foods of the time. Adults in living history museums learn with their minds, hearts, hands, and bodies; they create, perform, play, and have fun as well (Anderson, 1984; Magelssen, 2007). In some living history museums, visitors also learn about historical counter-narratives which challenge U.S. colonial histories and stereotypes, and make visible formerly “invisible” histories of women, racialized minorities and working class people. These are living history museums such as Colonial Williamsburg, where the experience of enslaved African Americans and women is incorporated alongside White colonial-settler history, Eckley Miners’ Village Museum in Pennsylvania showcasing the lives of impoverished coal miners, Cherokee-run Oconaluftee Village in North Carolina, and Diligwa Cherokee Village in Oklahoma highlighting indigenous historical and cultural perspectives.

Four key factors underlie the staging and performance of living history sites and the adult learning that happens within them (Williams, 2013, pp. 118-121): (a) scenography refers to a staged space created “as it was” at some point in the past, (b) characterization, to costumed interpreters (educators) who act out historic character roles, (c) narrative to storytelling which relies on “personal history, myths and legends” and “instructional narratives designed to educate the visitor,” and (d) collective experience, to significant cultural or social practices or rituals characteristic of the site and time. In Colonial Williamsburg, for example, scenography encompasses an historic 18th century town with hundreds of restored and reconstructed buildings, including four taverns, two inns, a printing shop, shoemaker’s, blacksmith’s, cooperage, cabinetmaker’s, gunsmith’s, wigmaker’s, silversmith’s, animals, and gardens (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2018). Characterization involves scores of costumed interpreters who speak and act as they would have during the 1700s. Narratives are diverse and often personal, and focus on the history of the site and U.S. nation, and stories of the local colonial inhabitants. Collective experience involves, for example, visitors digging in an heirloom vegetable garden with 18th century tools, being drilled as colonial soldiers, stomping water into clay to make bricks, or participating in a mock colonial era trial. These four elements are replicated in the creative living history project of the course in adult learning.

The Adult Learning Course

The objectives of adult learning theory and research graduate course are as follows: (a) to understand theories and research on adult learning, their underlying values, assumptions, and competing claims, (b) to position these theories in relation to broader questions of social justice and equity within diverse, pluralistic, and multicultural societies, and (c) to offer a space that fosters critical understanding, trust, and unity in an engaged learning community. Readings include both theory and practical applications, and move across the term from behaviorist, liberal, and humanist to progressive and radical philosophies of adult learning (Elias & Merriam, 2005). All students write discussion questions for each class, write and peer-review mid-term papers on an adult learning topic of their choice, and engage in experiential and theater-based activities during each class session. Their activities include, for example, writing (on adult learning theory) lyrics and performing songs in small groups, theater warm-up activities and role-plays (related to course curriculum), ball toss curriculum content, debates, total physical response language learning, an “uncocktail party” for cross-cultural communication, testing out “brain development” software apps, and talking circles. Students also get to know one another and debate ideas from the readings in pairs during a 20-min “walk and talk” outdoor activity in each class session. Other diverse learning activities are taught each class by pairs of students who design a participatory activity illustrating a practical application of one of the adult learning theories covered in the course. Taken together, these learning activities help students to identify their interests, reinforce their theoretical knowledge, spark their imaginations, and build facilitation capacity and relationships for their living history project.

The Living History Creative Projects

The adult learning course culminates in a “learning in a living history museum” assignment presented by small groups of students in the final two class sessions of the course (classes are 3 hr long, once a week). This final living history assignment has four parts: (a) an investigation of adult learning in a real world setting(s) of interest to the group, (b) a written report, including a reflective summary on group process (individual or as a group), (c) a one-page handout for the class, and (d) a creative presentation in which each group transforms the classroom into the adult learning setting they investigated, and performs as actors and adult educators within it. An abridged description of the project and creative presentation taken from the course syllabus is shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1.

Adult learning in living history museum assignment.

To date, the living history presentations of students enrolled in the course have been lively, rich adult learning sites, where participants have immersed themselves in experiencing, discussing, analyzing, and reflecting upon the course curriculum—that is, the theory and practice of adult learning, across a wide range of adult learning education settings. These living history settings have included the following: airport border security, Steve Nash Fitness World, a refugee and immigrant settlement agency; a hospital emergency room; an earthquake preparedness drill; a prison; a garbage dump; a Buddhist meditation class, preventing overdoses at a safe injection site; a stand-up comedy show; and a community church choir. Each final creative presentation was preceded earlier in the term by group members visiting and researching adult learning at similar sites in the real world.

For the classroom airport security living history setting, for example, class members had to pass inspection by uniformed police assigned to profile certain dark-skinned passengers (classmates had these roles given to them with an explanation of their role). The classroom was set up with props, tables, and signage, and scripted to resemble a U.S. airport Transportation Security Administration (TSA) border security and customs checkpoint. Some passengers passed security easily; others were harassed by guards or removed to interrogation rooms. The group noted that this was a site of intense stress and emotion (fear, dread, terror, confusion, relief), with closely controlled, “hegemonic” behavioralist, experiential and social learning (imitate others and conform to the rules or be punished), bodily learning (skin color, gender, posture, eye contact, “suspicious” appearance), and transformative learning. Following this immersion activity, we stepped out of our roles and the group led a discussion of regimes of border control, racial profiling, and cultural norms of body language. Many classmates shared personal stories of racism, fear, and socialization into norms of airport security behavior. The group concluded with a discussion of social movement learning, arts-based pedagogies, embodied and emotional learning needed to better prepare us to resist the humiliation of airport security, including standing alongside and advocating for travelers who were being subject to discrimination and harassment.

Another small group laid down a plastic tarp, filled the center of the classroom with a huge pile of all kinds of nasty garbage (a “landfill”), and assigned the class the role of sanitation workers dividing the garbage into four types of trash and recyclables. Following the story of a group member’s visit to a municipal solid waste sorting facility, and an introduction to the socio-environmental problem of waste and landfills, we donned rubber gloves and face masks and proceeded to pick through the garbage pile, trying to figure out how to sort it properly. As the group noted, this experience involved “auditory, visual, and olfactory senses,” and prompted us all to think about how we created, used, and disposed of our own solid waste. One of the group members who worked with a local “binners’ project” (mainly homeless people who harvest food from garbage bins) led us through a discussion of the inequities of food insecurity and food waste, of who actually handles waste globally (poor, marginalized people) and how we could act to change the situation. A third group project set up a prison in a room upstairs from our classroom and had prison guards march us in a silent line (“no talking!”) to the prison. Once there, we lost our names, received our “numbers,” were assigned to “cells,” shared a silent meal with other numbered prisoners, and were marched back to our cells. Later, we reflected on our experience in terms of our emotions, the control of our bodies, loss of identity, our country’s racialized, gendered, and class-based prison system, and adult learning theories embodying hope and change, all led by a (real life) prison educator among the group. Still another group set up a fitness center. We first received a trial membership at the entrance, and then revolved through exercise stations staffed by gym-suited “trainers.” Among the stations were aerobics with music on a video screen, stretching, weight-lifting, massage, and personal nutrition coaching. In one last project example, the group took us to a “church” where a choirmaster taught us to sing a hymn as the choir. We then performed the hymn to an audience in a second room. Most of us had never done this before. As the group noted, we learned to breathe properly, pace ourselves, not “overthink” our learning, mimic the conductor, cooperate as team, and feel a sense of communion, spirituality, and “reenergizing” in the company of others.

As a participant adult learner in these and other classroom living history settings, I was terrorized by airport security and prison guards (and quickly learned to conform to protocols), tried out new aerobic dance routines (which completely embarrassed me in front of my students), practiced “duck and cover” under desks for earthquakes, learned how to inject Naloxone for drug overdoses, practiced meditation, yoga, and weight lifting, became aware of emergency room protocols, and learned to sing a religious hymn as part of the simulated church choir, among many other things. All of this learning was backed up in student presentations with abundant references to relevant course readings, all kinds of student-designed handouts, exhibits, props, PowerPoint slides, videos, costuming, assigned role-playing for participants, a “debriefing” reflective discussion following each presentation, and a final written report and group reflection submitted after the last class.

Conclusion

As the examples above demonstrate, the living history class project is rich in relational and collective learning, bodily learning, emotional learning, social justice possibilities, creativity and the arts. As noted in the aforementioned section “Learning in Living History Museums,” all of these are important in facilitating transformative learning (English & Irving, 2012; Walker & Palacios, 2016). Students build trust and personal relationships first, in task-based and experiential learning activities and later, in the living history small group research, design, and creative presentation. They come to know each others’ life stories, debate ideas and perspectives across difference, learn to function as a team, take risks together, and reflect and write about their group process and learning. Their culminating creative living history presentations then immerse the other members of the class in their learning projects. Class members test their comfort zones, take risks, and experience broad and sometimes deep learning about difficult topics and settings. Each living history setting illustrates and teaches different aspects of adult learning theory, each involves a personal and collective learning experience for students, and each tells a powerful living story of people, place, and learning. Because the overall course curriculum is designed to gradually build trust, awareness, knowledge, empathy, and a supportive learning community, by the time students participate in the final project, they are willing to take emotional, intellectual, and bodily risks which encourage transformative learning. This is also possible partly because they are asked to take on and test out new roles and identities as actors in the learning environment; partly it is due to the wonderfully creative process of designing, presenting and performing in the staged world created by each project group; partly it is in the readings they have done on the topics they now engage, and the many discussions, experiential activities, and facilitations they have done across the term.

Even for me, the instructor, the experience of these living history presentations as an adult learner has been transformative, deeply emotional, with disorienting dilemmas, shifts in my knowledge and thinking, and changes in my own identity as an adult educator and engaged citizen (see Taylor, 2001). Likewise, in the students’ course evaluations, their written group reflection comments, project reports, and informal feedback, many of them have indicated the same was true for them. Although there has been no formal evaluation of this learning activity, similar approaches used in other adult education settings have been shown to be very effective at promoting a rich array of adult learning, both theoretical and practical (e.g., Champagne et al., 2001). Although well-suited to courses focusing specifically on adult learning, the experiential curriculum and living history museums project described in this article might also be adopted and adapted for a variety of adult education courses with different curricular foci, from higher education, continuing professional education, and vocational-technical education (especially where there are scarce resources) on to prison education, health care, government, community-based organizations, human resources development, and workplace learning. In fact, in our current era of neoliberal economics, growing political intolerance (racism, sexism, xenophobia, and classism) and rapid social change, perhaps nontraditional, innovative, and “empathy-invoking” approaches to adult education such as these are needed more than ever, and will help us face the many difficult challenges of the new era together as adult learners and educators.