Abstract
With this editor’s note, I am happy to announce that I have joined Fergal Finnegan and Chad Hoggan as a co-editor of the journal. Currently, I am an associate professor of adult and higher education administration at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. My background is in community youth development where I studied the developmental relevancy of free-time choices and nonformal learning contexts using theories of self-determination and lifespan development. My research has evolved to the study of adults working in these programs and organizations. I focus on transformative professional learning in low resource community and educational organizations where authentic and developmental learning opportunities are usually limited and constrained by resources, challenging socio-political work environments, and technical-instrumental views of learning. I contend we know too little about how professionals in these types of settings learn for individual, program, and organizational transformation. I am also interested in transformative learning (TL) in higher education.
I preface the discussion of the articles in this issue with two ideas that came to mind as I reflected on my new role and the authors’ contributions. In 2010, Fenwick conducted a review of the ways that learning was conceptualized in the workplace learning literature. She found a surprising lack of explicitness in defining the phenomenon of learning despite a diverse array of theories. Fenwick asserted that the general lack of specificity and precision in defining learning could be explained by researchers assuming everyone understood it, which she characterized as the assumption that learning is a single ontological object. Adult learning, she argued, could be better understood as a messy object (or perhaps a set of objects) each a “distinct phenomena in fundamentally different realities” (p. 90). Furthermore, she suggested that when scholars hold on to viewing workplace and adult learning as a single object they waste time arguing over definitions, normative prescriptions, and theoretical premises that may not be able to be reconciled and often do not move scholarship forward. Her argument is in some ways analogous to discussion of TL as a metatheory (Hoggan, 2016).
Fenwick (2010) also noted that operating from the view of multiple ontologies of learning poses challenges. How do scholars manage co-existence of ontological differences while sharing a common interest in similar phenomena? How does one respect and communicate across ontologies? Broadly, Fenwick concluded that encountering difference in ontologies of learning requires staying conscious of one’s own ontology, exercising a high degree of reflexivity in research, and being open to difference.
I find Fenwick’s (2010) argument helpful in sorting and making sense of the scholarly arguments, critiques, approaches, and tensions in TL. It is important to respect differences as we work within an evolving mosaic of varying philosophical foundations, theories/forms, methodologies, methods, levels of analysis, contexts, populations, and outcomes. Given these complexities, I believe it is important to hold space for ontological or paradigm differences while also striving for greater specificity and explicitness within varying TL conceptualizations.
Striving for precision does not imply a particular paradigm or method. I believe Fenwick (2010) and Hoggan (2016) are encouraging critical reflection on assumptions underlying scholarly dialogue. In holding space for difference, the task seems to be to appreciate what we know, how we know it, and what questions can be answered when taking a particular approach.
My thinking on openness and explicitness has also been influenced by Michael Quinn Patton’s (2007, 2015) applications of Blumer’s (1954) idea of a sensitizing concept. Typically, in qualitative research, a sensitizing concept is used to describe orienting to the phenomenon of interest before fieldwork. According to Denzin (as cited in Patton, 2015), it helps one comprehend social phenomena that vary by time, space, and context and fosters seeing manifestations of a phenomenon to better understand meaningful patterns. Recognizing that a sensitizing concept will have some ambiguity, Patton (2007) stresses its usefulness. He has applied sensitizing concept to sampling as well as argued that various fields or disciplines have broad sensitizing concepts. For example, wellness in the field of health and process use in evaluation. In this way, Patton (2007, 2015) not only contextualized sensitizing concepts, but he also suggested they are multi-layered. Returning to Fenwick’s language, these concepts may be “messy” containers but as Patton (2007) has argued, they are useful for holding together and synthesizing phenomena while also drawing distinctions. In TL scholarship, it may help to think of ideas like consciousness, perspective, disorienting dilemma, dialogue, and critical reflection as multi-layered sensitizing concepts. At the level of TL research, they require increasingly explicit definitions to guide inquiry into varying and situated manifestations of learning and transformation, which help us understand patterns that build theory(ies) and knowledge for solving problems of adult learning and development.
The variety and range of articles in this issue invites us to appreciate differences in approach, consider the potentiality of synthesis via sensitizing concepts, and acknowledge multiple ways of achieving explicitness in theoretical and empirical articles. I recognize the subjectivity of this framing, which by way of introduction also says something about me in my new co-editor role.
The first three papers foreground TL concepts of form, process, and outcome. In the first article, Samuel Karpen explains the potential of a multiple selves framework (MSF) for advancing TL theory and research. He both introduces MSF and contrasts it with other distinct conceptualizations of the self in TL advanced by Illeris, West, and Dirkx. Interestingly, the MSF is not based on a single unitary self but rather the self as an assemblage of self-aspects, which vary in strength and are activated in different social contexts. As Karpen explains, MSF offers a narrow and specific cognitive conceptualization of self with established measurement strategies that may be useful in analyzing particular kinds of beliefs in and across particular kinds of contexts. Explicitness is emphasized as he carefully differentiates which TL outcomes (Hoggan, 2016) are most likely associated with MSF self-aspect transformations.
Felix Dike and JohnBosco Chukwuorji in their article “Capturing Transformative Moments in a Participatory Values-Based Event” bring into focus the topic of process change in TL. Their study analyzes how a team of three educators transformed their collective work through participation in a values-based program. Dike and Chukwuorji assessed the TL change process longitudinally using a tool they developed from the literature that suggests some reconsideration of Mezirow’s 10 stages. They identified a meaning making phase prior to a disorienting dilemma. During this complex meaning making phase, initial frames of reference were elicited consistent with their tacit nature. In the analyses, Dike and Chukwuorji traced reconstruction of the focal frame of reference backwards from the long-term outcome to initial emergence. Their findings highlight the need to specifically identify the problematic frame that changes.
While Karpen and Dike and Chukwuorji narrowed in on explicit aspects of TL, Ed Watkins takes a more expansive view to conceptually examine how TL contributes to explaining the longer-term development of novice psychotherapists. He uses Hoggan’s (2016) outcomes of self, worldview, epistemology, ontology, behavior, and capacity to explicitly categorize the complex and integrated types of transformations involved in learning to be a therapist. Each outcome frame emphasizes a different aspect of the professional development process, which he describes in terms of exposure, reflection, and reorganization. Thematically, Watkins’ ideas of exposure are similar to Dike and Chukwuorji’s meaning making stage.
The next set of articles all deal with pedagogical inquiry into structured learning experiences and transformation of types of intercultural beliefs. However, there are significant differences in contexts, educational designs, and populations addressed. In their article, “Using Text via Dialectical Journals to Nurture Liminal Spaces in Teacher Education,” authors Stephanie Dodman, Nancy Holincheck, and Rebecca Brusseau studied the type and depth of student reflections in a college course on antiracist and multicultural education. The antiracist/multicultural course content was complemented with content on critical reflection and data were derived from students’ ungraded journals where they were invited to engage with authors of the texts they read. Dodman and colleagues provide a well detailed and explicit analysis of reflections differentiating entries indicative of TL with those showing other types of engagement such as stating beliefs and comprehension. Their research addresses several of the criticisms raised by Taylor and Laros (2014) about prior TL pedagogical research. Instructional methods were well detailed, analyses explored complexities of critical reflection, and their findings are contextualized to setting, time, and nature of engagement.
Vinesh Chandra, Carly J. Lassig, and Donna Tangen, in their article “Transformative Learning in Fijian Primary Schools: A Case Study of Australian University Students’ International Experiences,” examine the nature of intercultural transformations in an international service-learning program. In comparison to the other intercultural articles in this issue, they foreground the longer-term action-oriented impacts of participation in the program by studying a subset of three students. Although they center their study on the post-program actions, they trace transformation from initial dissonance, through reflection, to action. They suggest that dissonance is a catalyst for longer-term subjective reframing that influences action. Similar to Dike and Chukwuorji’s meaning making phase and Watkins’ concept of exposure, these authors focus on an initial experience that could be described as something prior to a disorienting dilemma.
The final three articles all use critical methodology. Using the framing of social transformative learning, Leona English and Lisa Rankin explore a human rights pedagogical model focusing on TL learning experiences, reflection, and outcomes. Their study focuses on six Canadians involved in a human rights organization and their experiences during a delegation visit to Guatemala. English and Rankin narrow in on the transformative conditions and dimensions of the carefully designed cross-cultural travel experience. Targeting common preconceived notions about human rights, they describe how dimensions of the pedagogical design and impactful experiences intersected to deepen and shift the way learners with pre-existing commitments to human rights reconstructed their understanding of power, privilege, oppression, and national policy.
Rebecca Strickland similarly looks at the intersection of a pedagogical model, experience, and reflection though she does so through a participatory action research design associated with a literary magazine written by men incarcerated for organized crime in Mexico. Focusing on written autobiographical and reflective essays as well as associated dialogue in constructing these essays, Strickland examines the “subjective value of transformative education in an institution designed to deprive people of their freedom.” Drawing on Freire, she analyzes how those who are incarcerated for serious crimes experience critical consciousness as they explore their personal stories and social issues of socioeconomic class, crime, prison life, social stigma, and the prison’s intended aim of reintegration into society. Strickland argues that context and group dialogue about their lives and everyday experience in prison are catalyzing elements for reflection and personal transformation. Similar to English and Rankin, this critical analysis also examines how pedagogy and experience are intricately interwoven to reveal and unpack hegemonic assumptions.
Finally, in the article “Making Connections in Challenging Times–The Transformative Potential for Poetry for Global Education,” Eilish Dillon weaves together literature on critical global education and transformative learning. She argues that poetry, as a pedagogical tool, is a means to: (a) engage learners with deeply complex global realities of inequity, (b) construct connections in the midst of uncertainty, and (c) reimagine alternative futures characterized by solidarity and hope. Emphasizing the power of a poem to evoke deep reflection, she carefully outlines her argument and then clearly illustrates her points with examples. Dillon acknowledges the connection to other aesthetic approaches in TL and makes the case for the unique qualities of poetry, which might be described as its connotative character.
Interestingly, all of the articles focusing on a pedagogical context, regardless of format, describe a transitional scaffolded experience that fosters critical reflection. There are conceptual similarities in Dike and Chukwuorji’s meaning making process, Watkins’ exposure, Dodman and colleagues’ liminal space, Chandra and colleagues’ dissonance, and the critical and generative qualities of experiences explained by English and Rankin, Strickland, and Dillon. The inter-relationship of these sensitizing concepts is worth further consideration as is their relationship to and distinction from Mezirow’s self-examination and disorienting dilemma.
The only article that was not specifically pedagogical was Karpen’s conceptual analysis of the MSF though he discusses feedback and evidence of self-aspect impact in educational settings. The MSF explanation of how self-aspects are represented in memory, differentially activated in relation to specific contexts, and serve as the basis for interpretation is a compelling area for inquiry. As we hold space for multiple paradigms, foregrounding cognitive self-aspects in studies of TL is also worthy of further consideration.