Abstract
The central argument for the Transformational Learning in Community Colleges (henceforth TLCC) book, as articulated by Hoggan and Browning is: …that if community colleges pay attention to the transformational learning needs of their students, they will experience a significant increase in student success in terms of completion rates and labor market outcomes, especially among their most vulnerable students. (p. 2)
Transformational education is their main premise. They write, “Our premise is that many community college students are experiencing transformation and attending school simultaneously. These students have additional learning needs beyond the technical knowledge and skills…” (p. 18). The acronym they use as an overarching description of the interventions they propose is SPIRE, representing “social, practical, inspirational, reflective, and emotional” supports (p. 19). They cite TF as an explanation for their looking beyond the community college setting for illustration for two reasons: first, their desire to “look outside the proverbial box created by institutional inertia” and, second, the richness of TF as a source of data, especially quotations (p. 20). How to import TF-type supports into the community college, however, is never satisfactorily explained, in our opinion.
The transformational learning (TL) theory used by Hoggan and Browning is that of Mezirow, first described in 1978 (p. 29). The particular definition they use is that TL “refers to processes that result in significant and irreversible changes in the way a person experiences, conceptualizes, and interacts with the world” (p. 30). Significant here is the authors’ assertion that TL principles have “yet to be commonly utilized in the research and practice of community college education,” ironic. However, it is since TL was developed in the community college context (p. 31).
Hoggan and Browning identify five commonly challenged aspects of students’ meaning perspectives:
Identity: “…a struggle between their imagined future possible self—the person they are hoping to become—and their current image of themselves” (p. 32);
Personal narrative: These are “stories we tell ourselves, most often based on our own experiences. When frequently told, self-stories become woven into our identities and outlook on life, and they can shape our behavior in a variety of settings” (p. 33);
Self-efficacy: “…people’s beliefs about whether and to what extent their actions can influence events in their lives” (p. 34);
Resilience: The stress of poverty, among other negative factors, can diminish the successful prospects of students, particularly “historically underserved” students. These stressors constitute “threats to resiliency,” but are ever more commonly seen now as not “innate and unchangeable,” but as “something that can be developed and improved” (p. 36); and
Social norms/code-switching: This aspect deals with cultural norms such as eye contact and other “diverse cultural traditions” that result from the different social contexts students may come from the community college.
One of the thoughtful contributions of the book is their exploration of tumultuous aspects of transformation. “When someone’s life experiences do not align with the expectations based on their meaning perspectives, it causes discomfort,” the authors write (p. 45). “These dilemmas cause a general state of confusion, dissonance, angst, and/or discomfort that build to a critical mass and propel the person onto a path toward transformation” (p. 46). Hoggan and Browning suggest that for some community college students, the return to school is itself disorienting and constitutes a “blow to their identity and to the imagined future person they were hoping to become” (p. 54), while for some, “some aspect of the students’ meaning perspective…is not serving them well in their pursuit of education” (p. 50). Relying on the experiences of the TF program, the authors recommend that students come to “classes and advising sessions with emotional responses to the stresses and changes brought about by college programs…” (p. 65).
During the process of personal transformation, “problematic assumptions about ourselves and the world around us are brought to light, and a critical assessment of these assumptions can help people progress through their change process” (p. 68). At this point in the process, it is beneficial to assess oneself to discard those assumptions that are unhelpful and defeating by engaging in critical self-assessment. Particularly impressive was the authors’ observation that the “process of personal transformation can also feel intensely isolating,” even “threatening and scary for those going through it” (p. 75). For “historically underserved” students, “immersion into the social milieu of higher education and its unfamiliar norms will likely cause many students to start feeling discomfort…,” especially as their meaning perspectives begin to shift (p. 77). Self-exploration is essential to the holistic approach that Hoggan and Browning espouse. Historically underserved students can “really only choose from the options that they perceive to be possible…. It is a much bigger challenge for students currently lacking this vision for themselves” (p. 96).
Hoggan and Browning leave us with little practical, empirical advice on piercing the veil of “institutional inertia,” described at the outset of TLCC as a principal impediment to the implementation of thriving supports for historically underserved students. Also, these rather vaguely described and implemented “threshold concepts” are to be accompanied by the teaching/learning of “soft skills…teamwork, attendance, time management, problem-solving, communication, and accepting criticism” (p. 117). Consequently, the authors argue for learning that occurs in “physical and social contexts” (p. 120).
Instead of traditional assessments, Hoggan and Browning argue for students to be presented with “authentic tasks…that would be useful in the contexts for which the education was supposed to be preparing them” (p. 122). Optimally, these learning environments would occur within the business districts, and even offices, where the students pursued vocations occur, providing for cultural immersion (p. 123, emphasis added). Additional applications are offered that involve collaboration with potential employers, performance review meetings with faculty and advisers, and work-based simulations and projects.
Reintegration is the final phase in the transformation process described by Hoggan and Browning, having collapsed Mezirow’s model from 10 steps to four. The three components of this final stage include trying on new roles, building competence and self-confidence, and reintegration of these skills into one’s life (p. 135). These components emphasize, according to the authors, the importance of supporting historically underserved students in a world that may at first seem relatively “tentative and foreign” so that they find a place within which they can feel authentic. They note that “the public and the private self is often much more pronounced for historically underserved students…” as the norms of the “hoped-for profession often includes their having to learn the norms of white, middle-class America, upon which the norms of higher-education are based” (pp. 136–137).
Hoggan and Browning repeatedly and valuably throughout TLCC assert the importance of building a success-oriented attitude within students by helping them to find early success. An example of how this can practically be achieved is in the teaching of keyboarding, so essential in the word processing and data-driven environment of the modern workplace. The advantage they suggest is that even students who have been away from a formal learning environment for some time can meet early success and start to “build competence and self-confidence” with the early acquisition of such skills (pp. 148–149). “The transformation process should result in the person eventually finding themselves in a new state of normalcy with their revised meaning perspectives” (p. 165). Optimally, this transformation not only is one that equips the learner with professional proficiencies but also helps them “develop a more internalized sense of self, priorities, and goals, and thus have less of a need to receive validation from others” (p. 165). Indeed, a worthy goal.
Here, the authors tell us that “the development of identity is a common theme in any of the various disciplines that talk about significant personal change” (p. 167). Correct. It is. However, it is not only “a key part of this final phase” in the transformation process (p. 167). Indeed, the issue of inadequate, or at least insufficiently supported, identity formation is a common, though underdeveloped, thread throughout the book, from the authors’ first description of the disadvantages of historically underserved students.
Although the approach outlined in TLCC is “a form of action learning, with a sequential learning process producing immediate learning outcomes and decisions that can be applied quickly to one’s work,” the authors contend they “acknowledge that such large-scale institutional change efforts would be immensely difficult to undertake, given all the countervailing forces noted elsewhere within this book” (p. 183). Their answer to this conundrum is to recommend that community colleges target “specific programs of study or several related programs of study that attract (or need to attract) significant numbers of historically underserved students” (p. 183).
Despite their acknowledgment that institutional inertia remains a tremendous obstacle, Hoggan and Browning optimistically contend that the interventions and supports outlined in TLCC “are likely to result in more systematic changes” (p. 198). It is, they hope, likely that the community college professionals implementing these supports will themselves undergo a “significant shift in perspective about the institution or department and how it supports students…” (ways this might occur are set forth subsequently; p. 199). Alas, however, “Not all stakeholders will come around in support of the plan, and some of their voices, either individually or collectively, may have considerable influence” (p. 203).
Hoggan and Browning offer an incisive look at the challenges faced by “historically underserved”—and all nontraditional and first-generation college—students. That the distance between present capacities and/or personal identity can create a chasm between these students and the traditional university experience, even as that experience is modeled in community colleges, can be defeating. The application of TL theory is demonstrated here, and seeing aspects of TL identified in the supports offered by TF is highly optimistic. TLCC left us, however, to wonder why the authors entitled this work as they did. More persuasive and valuable would have been to cast this work as a road map for establishing auxiliary and supplemental supports for community college students through auxiliary partnerships with groups like TF. In this way, the authors could propose meaningful change while circumventing, if not breaking, the grip of “institutional inertia” and without challenging—even implicitly—the traditional curriculum of community colleges. An overarching argument the authors are making in TLCC is summed up late in the book: In order for people to experience growth, they need both validation and challenge. people need to feel validated that their current ways of thinking and being are legitimate, so that their energy can turn toward the adaptation and growth necessary to accommodate current challenges, rather than that energy being focused on defending and justifying their current ways of thinking and being. (p. 158)