Abstract
The field of transformative learning continues to evolve. From Freire’s notion of critical consciousness and Mezirow’s idea of perspective transformation, scholars have explored the personal, social, and political dimensions of this way of thinking about learning, development, and change. The authors represented in this issue are no exception. Their work reflects the growing conceptual diversity that has come to characterize the scholarship of transformative learning.
While these five studies represent diverse theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches, they all reflect a common interest in studying, to put it in a parochial manner, what is in their “backyard.” The contexts represented in these studies are close to the authors. They are immersed in them, empirically, conceptually, or ideologically. Like Piaget’s study of his children (Beilin, 1992), the authors in this issue seek to advance their understanding of transformative learning by focusing on that which is near. This approach is in sharp contrast to Mezirow’s (1978) groundbreaking national study of transformative learning. Each embraces various notions of inquiry to guide their scholarly explorations of these contexts.
These studies also reflect a kind of continuum, from the focus of the inner self, represented by Stephen Spear’s work, to the more critical perspectives demonstrated in the article by Cassandra McKay Jackson. However, they are all an attempt to work, in various ways, with the complex dynamics between the deeply personal and the highly charged social and political. Central to these works is the idea of relationship. The Spear article focuses on the mysterious, often unknown relationships we establish with our selves. He argues that becoming aware and conscious of these relationships represents an important task of ongoing professional development for educators.
In their article on transformative inquiry, Michele Tanaka and her colleagues shift this focus somewhat to the mentor–mentee relationship. The “shared vulnerability” they attribute to these relationships provides a location and space for teachers training future teachers to engage in a form of inquiry that, they argue, proves transformative for them. The intersection of the personal and the social within transformative learning is further explored by Bailey, Stribling, and McGowan. Using the concept of the “growing edge,” these authors describe how teachers navigate the cyclical process of moving from firm ground to the growing edge and back again. Through this process, the authors document the transformation of teachers of social justice.
Duenkel, Pratt, and Sullivan also engage in an inquiry to study educators’ relationships between the personal and the social. Using cooperative inquiry, these authors report on a study of seven educators interested in seeking to develop more constructive relationships with the authority that was inherent in his or her roles. Informed by concepts and perspectives from critical theory, these authors describe cooperative inquiry as both a process for understanding transformative learning and a strategy for fostering it. Especially evident in their findings is the development among the participants of a deepening awareness and understanding of how cultural constructs influence and shape their sense of self and their being in the outer world.
Finally, through her article on socioemotional learning among youth, Cassandra McKay-Jackson urges us to question dominant perspectives on socioemotional learning. These perspectives seem to be concerned primarily with emotion management and, as a result, represent approaches to emotional learning that are often more restrictive rather than liberating. She also challenges us to reflect on the idea of transformative learning among youth. While transformative learning often implies adult learners, as the other four articles in this issue suggest, McKay-Jackson explores this phenomenon with youth between the age of 14 and 16. These individuals are participants in out-of-school programs, such as community service learning projects. In this study, she works with youth who are participating in the Chicago Freedom School, an example of one of these projects. She documents these experiences as contexts for fostering and supporting what she refers to as critical socioemotional learning and social political development.
As I suggested earlier, these five articles represent a widely diverse picture of learning. Can we understand them all as variations on a common theme of transformative learning? As a field, what do we think about the methodological shifts represented in this issue? The reviewers of these articles have suggested that they are contributing to our evolving understanding of what this idea of transformative learning is, how it occurs, and how it is best facilitated. Such diversity encourages us to think about transformative learning in a more nuanced and broad manner. Yet, this diversity also forces us to question, as Newman (2012) suggests, the very nature of the phenomenon. To what extent are we deepening our understanding of this way of learning or simply cataloguing the various contexts in which it is thought to occur? How does knowledge of this form of learning advance?
As you read the studies contained within this issue, I urge you to keep these thoughts and questions in mind. We hope that they stimulate for you similar questions, continuing inquiry, and explorations.