Abstract
Training for Transformation (TfT) is a methodology and a process for community development grounded in the work of Paulo Freire who has guided the work of adult educators in over 60 countries for 40 years, largely in the southern hemisphere. It is a practical process, inspiring people to understand their world with both mind and heart and to take action on behalf of justice and the common good. Through formal and informal programs ranging from 1-day workshops to a 1-year in-service diploma course, the editors of this book, Anne Hope and Sally Timmel, have sparked a world-altering movement of adult education for democratic social change.
In 2013, the TfT program brought together practitioners who had been trained in the TfT process, asking them to describe their work and its consequences in the lives of the people they worked with—communities marginalized by gender, caste, poverty, and other social and political realities. The resulting descriptions comprise the chapters of this book, providing examples from Africa, Asia, South America, several European countries, the United States, and Australia. The stories presented demonstrate challenges and mistakes as well as successes and sustainable achievements of development using the TfT method.
This method begins with an inner transformation of mind and heart, a formidable transformation described in many of the chapters. Adelina Ndeto Mwau from Kenya says this about her training in TfT, I started to see the world and my community through a new lens, and started to question my position and condition as a woman. This experience started a fire in me, a fire that even today is burning, a fire that will continue to bring life to me and to the community where I live and work. (p. 100)
Beyond evidence of transformative learning, the narratives of Adelina and other educators in this book demonstrate that personal transformation must be ultimately directed to social transformation—action taken in and on behalf of people on the margins. TfT is a radical approach grounded in a “head, heart, and hand” pedagogy. Vérène Nicolas describes it this way: “‘head’ for the rigor of intellectual knowledge, writing, and research methodologies; ‘heart’ for the emotional and spiritual awakening necessary for individual and collective change; and ‘hand’ for the skills, methodologies, and practical initiatives for change” (p. 84).
Transformative learning theory was criticized in its earliest iterations for being too focused on “head,” on changing perspectives without concern for changing the world that nurtured and reinforced those perspectives (Welton, 1995). John Dirkx (2001, 2009, 2012); O’Sullivan, Morrell, and O’Connor (2002); and Lawrence (2012) have argued that “heart” and soul is an essential element in transformation. In Transformation for Training in Practice, Hope and Timmel not only posit “hand” as essential but turn the transformation paradigm on its head (no pun intended) by beginning transformative with a call to action—an agenda for justice and change. The authors in these chapters were led to personal transformation in most instances because they were inspired to work with the dispossessed and were frustrated by their ineffectiveness in doing so. To do the good work to which they were committed, they first needed to rethink their assumptions, and in Adelina’s words, “see the world and my community through a new lens.”
Anne Hope and Sally Timmel (1995, 1999) have captured the essence of TfT in their earlier books, Training for Transformation, a manual in four volumes. While not required for understanding Training for Transformation in Practice, there is much about the practice of TfT in the narrative chapters that cannot be fully appreciated without the material provided in the manual. There are frequent reference processes and specific “codes,” what Freire called generative themes, the meaning of which a reader can only guess at. Despite this limitation, this is an inspiring and thought-provoking introduction to power of transformation linked to action. It is highly recommended to those of us committed to unleashing the minds, hearts, and hands of adult learners.