Abstract
As current world events unfold around us, we are again reminded of the importance and challenge of lifelong and transformative learning in an age of increasing globalization. In our undergraduate and graduate programs, many of us studied the works of scholars and thought leaders who consistently reminded us of the importance of an educated body politic. They stressed the need for world citizens who are capable of thoughtful and reflective analysis of contemporary issues facing their societies and their worlds. Recent political, economic, and terrorist events in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia affirm the reality of globalization and the need for thoughtful and reflective approaches to many of the so-called wicked problems that have arisen as a result of the powerful and widespread reach of globalization. A transformative education shares many of these beliefs and assumptions about the value and need of an educated citizenry.
Many of these recent events, however, question the very ways in which we have been framing the issues underlying these dramatic developments. In recent weeks and years, we have seen unprecedented movement of large numbers of people crossing borders. Risking everything, including their lives and those of their family members, they seek safe and supportive havens from geopolitical conflict, terrorism, or the brutal actions of drug cartels. The immigration of large numbers of people has brought our relationship with the “other” into bold relief. As these relationships become more explicit, they illuminate underlying beliefs and worldviews thought to be a feature of times past. Yet, here they are, on our proverbial front door step, revealing increased polarization of thoughts and attitudes within so-called advanced democracies.
For those of us committed to transformative education, such developments are disturbing and challenge some of the very tenants upon which such a view of education is grounded. In this highly charged political environment, the virtues of tolerance, dialogue, free speech, open-mindedness, and inclusion, long held to be important goals of a transformative education, are at risk. Calls for closing and securing our borders, taking back the country, putting the country first and the drumbeats of nationalism increasingly displace calls for expanding consciousness or deepening our self-understanding and the relations of power in which our work is embedded, and seeking alternative possibilities for social justice. These developments make explicit currents of nationalism long bubbling just beneath the surface of the collective consciousness of many regions in the world.
As educators committed to transformative learning, these international developments provide a kind of framework through which we may view our individual and collective efforts. What do such emerging global dynamics suggest for the ways in which we conceptualize transformative learning? How does our current research speak to the challenges for transformative education created by the forces of contemporary globalization?
We can consider the articles within this issue from these questions. The work of Brian Sohn and his colleagues underscores the importance of transformative learning as an existential phenomenon, one that deeply connects with lived experiences of our lives. Their work underscores the importance of an open, free, and collaborative learning environment for transformative learning. While the authors claim that the findings suggest that discomfort is not necessary for transformative learning to occur, we need further research to clearly document transformative learning outcomes associated with these environmental features. One can imagine that working with the wicked problems discussed earlier will almost certainly be characterized by difficult and perhaps even painful relationships.
Azulai, Lorenzetti, and Walsh continue this emphasis on articulating and further developing the process characteristics associated with a transformative learning environment. Working from the concept of the World Café, these authors stress the participatory dimensions of this approach to learning and development but also point out the lack of attention to structural characteristics that may be present in the World Café process, such as reflexivity and power differentials. Through their analysis, the authors claim that they provide stronger connections to more liberatory and transformative approaches to learning, producing a tool they refer to as the emancipatory learning charter. This work helps us link more directly to the social and cultural challenges of globalization that transformative educators are increasingly facing in their work.
In his analysis of the phenomenological philosopher Edith Stein, David Thomas Culkin also builds on this thread of social activism within transformative learning theory. Culkin focuses on how, through her work, Stein sought to integrate theory and social activism. In helping to illuminate this connection to social activism, Culkin implicitly resurfaces the debate over 25 years ago when Jack Mezirow initially distinguished the role of the educator from that of the social activist. Given our current geopolitical environment, perhaps this issue warrants further analysis and deliberation.
With this issue, the Journal of Transformative Education initiates a couple transitions. First, Dr. Patricia Cranton is stepping down as coeditor of the journal. The editorial staff and all associated with the production of the journal are deeply indebted for her assistance in moving the journal forward. Patricia will stay on as a member of the Panel of Consulting Editors. We extend our heartfelt appreciation for her contributions to the journal, as well as her ongoing contributions to the scholarship of transformative learning and wish her the very best.
Replacing Dr. Cranton as coeditor will be Dr. Chad Hoggan, from North Carolina State University. Dr. Hoggan received his masters in Adult and Community College Education from North Carolina State University and his EdD in Adult Learning and Leadership from the AEGIS program at Teachers College, Columbia University. He was an instructor of organizational leadership at Wright State University before joining the faculty at NC State in 2012. Chad has been very active in the transformative learning literature and community since 2005. Included in his corpus of publications is the book, Creative Expression in Transformative Learning: Tools and Techniques for Educators of Adults (Krieger Publishing, 2009, coedited with Soni Simpson and Heather Stuckey). He is also the author of a comprehensive review of the transformative learning literature from which he created a typology of transformational learning outcomes (Adult Education Quarterly, February 2016).
Chad is part of an incoming team of coeditors that will officially take over editorship of the journal in January 2017. His coeditors will be Kaisu Mälkki of the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Fergal Finnegan of Maynooth University, Ireland. With the October issue, we begin this transition. Chad will serve as coeditor with me for the remainder of 2016.
Chad and his colleagues will be assuming editorship at a time when the world seems to cry out for deeper, more effective means of fostering transformative learning. The concept of the “global citizen” challenges recent currents of nationalism sweeping around the world and helps direct efforts, such as those of this journal, to fostering deep structural changes in our collective consciousness. I am confident that Chad will provide the leadership needed to direct the journal in these troubled times.
The editorial staff at Sage and Michigan State University warmly welcome Chad and his colleagues to the editorial team for the Journal of Transformative Education. We look forward to working with him over the next 6 months.