At Home with the Mavericks: Student and Teacher Perspectives of the Transformative Potential of Glasser’s Choice Theory at an Alternative Secondary School

The Research Site as a Sanctuary: A Profile of a Unique Alternative School

The research site for this study is an alternative high school located in the prairies of western Canada that caters to at-risk, bullied, and marginalized students. Based on my experience of working with students at the school as a teacher for two years, I observed that the student population at the time of this research included, but is likely not limited to students from low income families, students of non-binary gender identities and sexual orientations, students from racial minority groups, students living with neurodiverse psychological experiences (depression, anxiety, autism and sleep disorders), students with drug and alcohol addictions, young mothers, and those experiencing other intersectional barriers. Some students attend the site daily while some use it as a space to work when they are available to attend school. The motto of this school is ‘Freedom = Responsibility’ which also serves as the guiding principle for the school culture. The type of freedom apparent at the site is similar to what Neill (1992) described as freedom, not licence in that students equate their personal freedom with the responsibility to not impinge on the freedom of others. This school consistently scores above the Canadian average on aspects of students’ positive sense of belonging, motivation, engagement, student-teacher relationships, expectations of completing high school and student feelings of safety (OurSCHOOL, 2018) compared to both traditional and alternative school models across Canada. Edgar-Smith and Palmers’ (2015) asserted that research shows observable increases in positive peer relationships, sense of belonging, school performance and commitment to school within alternative school programs. The OurSCHOOL results (OurSCHOOL, 2018) from this school site reflect these authors’ assertion.

I worked at the research site as a music teacher for two years prior to carrying out this study and had established positive prior relationships with all of the staff and most of the student volunteers. As such, I had developed a level of trust and familiarity with the participants which also held the potential for influencing their responses and creating positive bias in my analysis. Use of bracketing and measures such as seeking dissenters in recruitment were attempts to mitigate my bias and obtain a diverse dataset for analysis. I acknowledge that neutrality is both impossible and in some cases undesirable in the context of qualitative research, however, I feel that it important to state this aspect of my positionality in relation to the study.

The specific research question explored through this study is: What are the perspectives of students and teachers of the intents and the transformational impacts of learning and practising Choice Theory in an alternative school? The theoretical framework and methodology used to explore this question and the findings that flowed from the study are described in the following sections, beginning with a brief literature review of alternative education, transformative education and Choice Theory.

Alternative Schools: Spaces for Experimentation and Transformation

In the second decade of the 21st century, alternative education is widely accepted as a term for schools or school programs that are devised and implemented to provide schooling for those students that are not well-served by the mainstream public education system (Atkins, 2008; Bascia & Maton, 2016; Hadar et al., 2018; Morrissette, 2011; Neill, 1992; Quinn et al., 2006; Raywid, 1999). It is worth noting, however, that alternative education has existed in North America and elsewhere in many diverse forms since the very beginnings of public education (Atkins, 2008; Bascia & Maton, 2016; Hadar et al., 2018; Miller, 1990; Miller, 2010, 2017; Morrissette, 2011; Neill, 1992; Price, 2009; Quinn et al., 2006; Raywid, 1999). Over this time alternative schools have developed and embraced unorthodox pedagogical and organizational approaches in order to create working alternatives to the mainstream education system (such as Ataman & Kaya, 2017; Glasser, 1975, 1992, 1999; Jones, 2014; Lagana-Riordan et al., 2011; Raywid, 1994, 1999). Some of these approaches can transcend the goal of maintaining student engagement through graduation that is typically the mainstream purview of alternative education (Raywid, 1994) and serve to create transformative spaces where students can learn more about themselves and what it means to be self-reflexive and conscious adults. In order to theorize about the different types of modern alternative schools, Raywid (1999) proposed a typology that categorizes alternative schools based on their educational aims. She observed that alternative schools aim to either (1) change the student, (2) change the school and/or (3) change the education system itself. Many alternative schools, including the school that served as the research site for this study, adopt the Type 1 approach of changing the student. There are many different approaches to this aim.

According to Raywid (1999), alternative school environments that aim to change the student place the responsibility for not being engaged with school firmly on the student (as affirmed by Quinn et al. (2006)). Some alternative schools address this with a co-operative, holistic or therapeutic approach to education (Edgar-Smith & Palmer, 2015; Quinn et al., 2006) where nurturing and support is preferred to a punitive approach to solving problem behaviours exhibited by students (Jones, 2014). Some supportive pedagogical techniques might consist of individualized learning opportunities (Jones, 2014; McGee & Lin, 2017), counselling, food programs and other supports for students who cannot learn well within the mainstream system due to difficulties in their personal lives outside of school. Some scholars consider the aim that drives these types of school as to provide tools for students to overcome self-imposed limitations while providing them with a safe environment in which to learn to use these tools toward improving their mental health (Edgar-Smith & Palmer, 2015; McGee & Lin, 2017). Some of the tools that support capacity-building toward mental health are described by Lind (2013) and include the presence of positive teacher-student and student-student relationships (as affirmed by Jones (2014) and McGee and Lin (2017)), an environment of caring, a safe and secure school culture, a sense of unconditional acceptance and non-judgement within the school, appropriate challenges and opportunities for risk taking. Social aspects such as engaging students with social issues, a power structure in which students and staff share power over the direction of the school, and freedom with responsibility are also mentioned. Many alternative schools also nurture personal growth in students including personal and academic success, fostering maturing in the student through experience, preparation for adulthood, mentoring and opportunities to develop critical thinking skills (also affirmed by McGee and Lin (2017)). The research site for this study aligns with these descriptions. The school’s supportive atmosphere is driven by personal reflection, capacity-building and exploration of consciously chosen selfhood and serves as a fertile ground for the emergence of many of the processes and phenomena associated with transformative learning.

Transformative Learning: Differing Perspectives

The core of transformative learning, and the place from which it grows is critical self-reflection (Arends, 2014; Dyson, 2010; Mezirow, 1997; O’Sullivan, 1999; Taylor, 2008). Cranton (2002) described critical self-reflection as the process of examining one’s values, beliefs, and assumptions, weighing the validity of one’s current beliefs against experience and a thorough consideration of why one possesses these beliefs, assumptions, and values. Transformative learning, according to foundational author Jack Mezirow (1997), is based on critical reflection on our frames of reference and can reveal failures in the deeply held assumptions upon which we base our habits of mind and points of view. In transformation theory, Mezirow argued that through reflection and discourse within a community we can learn to change our points of view and habits of mind in order to function in a way that is more aligned with our desires (Mezirow, 1991). Taylor (2008) agreed that the process of reflection as examining personal experience and of re-imagining, re-constructing and internalizing new meanings that can be attached to that experience but criticizes Mezirow for what he sees as an overly rational approach to transformation. Taylor (2008) claimed that rationality focuses too much on transformation of the individual at the expense of exploring the transformative potential of social context and social change. Taylor (2008) went on to suggest that transformational education adopt numerous different viewpoints. He classified these as social-emancipatory, neurobiological, cultural-spiritual, race-centric and planetary forms that would ideally be considered holistically in the process of transformational learning. Some scholars, including O’Sullivan (1999) argued that the main significance of transformative education is to impress upon students the importance of becoming aware of and resisting the status quo of the dominant value system and individualistic market capitalism. Throughout his writing, O’Sullivan (1999) considered transformative education as a means to transcend the focus on the human scale of relationships and develop an understanding of historical context and the ‘creative evolutionary processes of the Universe, the planet, the Earth community, the human community, and the personal world’ (p. 208). Dyson (2010) followed O’Sullivan’s concept of transformation beyond the personal with his claims that we begin to live differently through reflecting and critically analysing first ourselves, then society, and the world in which we live. We can see that theories of transformative learning thus range from a focus that is primarily on the individual transforming their own thoughts and behaviour with the help of others right up to the scale of speculative theorizing about the meaning of life and the universe.

William Glasser’s Choice Theory

Choice Theory is a theoretical framework developed by Dr William Glasser (Glasser, 1975, 1999) to explain his observations of human behaviour. Glasser was a humanist educational psychologist (Tanrikulu, 2014) who believed that effective therapeutic practices designed to elicit positive change in the individual had their roots not in analysis of the influence of past events, but in teaching people to develop awareness of their inner behaviour and how this inner behaviour affects their experience of outer reality (Glasser, 1975, 1992, 1999; Walter et al., 2008).

Walter et al. (2008) explained Glasser’s concept of Choice Theory as being a purely behaviourist theory. In fact, according to Glasser (1999), humans do nothing except behave and that all behaviour is chosen, either consciously or unconsciously. This multi-variable behaviour is what Glasser calls total behaviour which he asserted is driven by one’s acting, thinking, feeling and physiology (Edwards, 2009; Glasser, 1992, 1999; Tanrikulu, 2014; Walter et al., 2008). Just as these elements are expressed in different intensities within different individuals (Walter et al., 2008), the individual has the capacity to exert varying degrees of control over them, which results in shifts across the entire constellation as all elements are holistically interconnected in their influence over one another (Tanrikulu, 2014; Walter et al., 2008). According to Glasser (1999), sub-conscious attempts at needs-fulfillment will take over if one is unaware of or unwilling to participate in taking conscious control of their thinking and acting. Unhealthy sub-conscious behaviour can lead to a variety of other ill effects including producing psychosomatic symptoms of illness (Edwards, 2009). These unconscious behaviours and beliefs provide a parallel concept to the habits of mind and meaning schemes discussed by Mezirow (1991) as being the objects of reflection, deconstruction and rebuilding under transformation theory.

Basic Qualitative Study Guided by Phenomenology

Phenomenology’s philosophical underpinnings guided the design, implementation and analysis of the study. The focus of this research was on exploring the existence and qualities of the essence (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) of transformation arising from learning Choice Theory. This essence, or essential invariant structure, is said by Creswell (1998) to be a single, shared meaning of the phenomenon in question. Laverty (2003) stated that phenomenology’s focus is on the description of the structure of an experience, which aligns with this study’s goal of seeking out and understanding any shared concepts or structures emerging from within the aggregate of participants’ individual perceptions. Additionally, Webb and Welsh (2019) indicated that the goal of a phenomenological study is not actually to solve a problem, but to collect and interpret individual perspectives of a particular experience. The research question that guides this thesis is not intended to solve a problem, but to explore commonalities across individual experiences of transformation through learning Choice Theory and thus aligns well.

A combination of what Smith (2006) described as interpretive and bracketed phenomenology was used in this study. This choice was made because it was important to have some separation between preconceived notions that I had attached to the school during my experience working there as a teacher. Analytic phenomenology was discarded as an option because I did not feel that I was knowledgeable enough about the strict logical processes that I felt were necessary in order to deduce the form and structure of the consciousness of the participants. It is for this reason that I consider the methodology of this research to be a phenomenology-informed basic qualitative study as opposed to a purely phenomenological one.

Participant Selection

The purpose of this investigation was to explore student and staff perceptions of the transformational influence of taking a local option course on Choice Theory. Potential participants were required to have experience learning Choice Theory—either through the mandatory training for all staff or through taking the local option course as a student. The participant pool serves as a holistic single body comprised of students, staff and alumni and themes and codes that emerged through analysis of interview transcripts were considered across the entire population. A convenience sample of participants was collected from the population of approximately 90 students and eight teachers through four main avenues: (a) an in-person presentation at the school meeting the week prior to data collection, (b) posters placed around the school, (c) an email sent to all students by the principal, and (d) individual word-of-mouth and referrals by teachers and other students. Interested participants were provided with packages describing their rights, risks and responsibilities as participants as well as a brief description of the study. Those wishing to join the study were provided with consent forms with those under the age of 18 given parental consent forms in addition to their own. Upon my receipt of signed consent forms, one-on-one interviews were scheduled at the participant’s convenience. In total four students, three student alumni and seven staff members participated in interviews.

The methodology also consisted of some preliminary informal discussions with the principal, a past course instructor and the current course instructor to learn more about the history of the course. I also sought out any documents pertaining to the course creation, history and delivery. The purpose of these discussions and in reading these documents was not to collect data for analysis but to gather background information that provided a richer context within which to analyse the data that I did collect.

Method

In keeping with Merriam and Tisdell’s (2016) description of the semi-structured interview method, the interview guide contained a blend of structured and unstructured questions which were all used flexibly within the bounds of the study’s aims. The interview guide served the role of providing direction and grounding in the conversations. However, the guide allowed for freedom to pay close attention to the conversations and explore potentially relevant avenues throughout the interview. There were often instances where ‘going off script’ yielded unexpected trains of thought that provided insights that would not have presented themselves otherwise. An example is the emergence of the importance of the language of Choice Theory in reflection and transformation, which was an unexpected finding.

The questions were categorized into three distinct sections: (1) clarification of terms and concepts where participant understanding of the concepts of Choice Theory as described by (Glasser, 1999) were assessed; (2) perceptions of self-transformation which explored perceptions of personal change in meaning perspectives (as per Mezirow, 1991) influenced by learning Choice Theory; and (3) transformations in participants’ expanding circles of awareness as inspired by the theorizing of O’Sullivan (1999), Dyson (2010), and Taylor (2008). This final set of questions called upon the participants to share Choice Theory’s influence on changes in their perceptions of self-awareness and autonomy that oriented outwards from themselves towards social justice, ecological awareness, and planetary/universal consciousness.

The majority of one-on-one data-collection interviews were held in person at the school site in various classrooms as they were available. Interview times ranged between twenty minutes and one hour. Two student participants were unable to travel to the school site and were interviewed in real-time through Google Docs with the resulting text interview serving as the source of analysis. All in-person interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed for analysis.

Analysis and Discussion

Choice Theory as a Transformative Life Skill

The transformative potential of Choice Theory seems to rest in the individual being open to self-examination, developing empathy for the behaviour of others, and initiation into an environment that supports transformative modes of thinking through communicating in a shared language and being immersed within a common philosophy. The concept of self-evaluation emerged as both the most valuable outcome and the greatest challenge in learning Choice Theory. Self-evaluation was referenced by students and teachers as a benefit that Choice Theory provided in giving them a clear and concise way of exploring their inner worlds and in working towards living a more conscious and conscientious life. The school staff communicated a well-developed sense of self and a high level of job and life satisfaction through their discussions. From their perspective, this positive state of mind overwhelmingly resulted from using Choice Theory for self-evaluation and applying the self-knowledge they gained through reflection to their professional and personal lives. Many of the students also reported that learning and using Choice Theory refined a deeper sense of not only who they are but what they want. The students’ degree of self-awareness and understanding of the subconscious motivations that lie behind their own behaviour was inspiring and at times surprising.

Choice Theory as a Tool for Critical and Transformative Education

According to Carspecken (2012), human society is defined by communication. From this perspective, Carspecken asserted that discussion between humans is the primary driver of change within human society. However, he also argues that dominant ideologies and power structures inhibit discussion that could create potential for collective and personal freedom. In speaking with participants in this study, an interesting and important theme regarding the usefulness of persuasive strategies for change arose. A fundamental concept in Choice Theory related by all participants is that the only change that anyone can create is change within themselves. This confirms the common observation that many attempts to persuade and convince other people to enact change are limited by the receptivity of the targets of persuasion to one’s arguments. Scholars of Choice Theory argue that when individuals feel that they are being manipulated or controlled, poor relationships are often the result (Edwards, 2009; Tanrikulu, 2014). This is a significant impediment to eliciting openness to experience and subsequently to self-evaluation, both of which are foundational tenets of transformation theory. Simultaneously, Choice Theory contains some potentially valuable tools that could be used within critical and transformative pedagogy for prompting individuals toward transformation and instigating a process of opening up to consideration of personal change. This is the pre-requisite within both transformative education (as per Arends, 2014; Cranton, 2002; Dyson, 2010; Mezirow, 1997; O’Sullivan, 1999; Taylor, 2008) and Choice Theory (as per Glasser, 1975, 1992, 1999; Walter et al., 2008) to broader social change. Receptivity to change is encouraged by the vital step of involvement, in which a personal connection is established that allows the students to accept the teachers into their quality worlds (Glasser, 1992, 1999). Being positively accepted into the quality world of the listener is essential; otherwise, arguments revolving around personal, social or planetary scale change will likely not be accepted (Glasser, 1975, 1992, 1999). Based on the findings of this research, it seems that in the case of this site transformation was largely limited to considerations of the self and in heightened empathy for other people. Examples of transformation towards planetary and universal consciousness as theorized by scholars such as (O’Sullivan, 1999) were largely absent, despite inclusion of these ideas as part of the interview guide.

Another path toward critical transformative education that could be addressed within the Choice Theory framework is through advocating for change through communication of needs fulfilment (Jones, 2014). Teachers and students both discussed elements of personal change that were initiated by reflection on the positive and negative ways that people behave in order to address their needs. Participants recognized that personal behavioural choices to fulfil needs in negative ways were not working for them and by learning Choice Theory and posing Reality Therapy-based questions (see Glasser, 1975) to themselves they became willing and able to consciously find more enriching ways to fill their needs.

Limitations

Limitations of this study emerge from the use of a convenience sample to collect data. As all of the participants were volunteers, there were very few who communicated that they did not find Choice Theory useful. Only one individual related that they did not use Choice Theory in their day to day life. However, this individual did confirm that Choice Theory changed their perspective of themselves, of others and of society in general. The inclusion of more dissenters would have added to the validity, reliability and trustworthiness of the study.

Future Research Directions

As the foundational author of transformation theory, Mezirow (1991) viewed transformative education as limited to adults and a process of creating change within one’s own frame of reference. Interestingly, through the conversations that comprised the data collection phase of this research, many teachers in this study emphasized maturity, not age, as the deciding factor in whether or not an individual has the potential for transformation through learning

Choice Theory. Additionally, there were certainly examples of students in this study who exhibited aspects of transformational thinking in their responses. This supports the recent questioning of Buttigieg and Calleja (2021) and Meerts-Brandsma and Sibthorp (2021) about the possibility of transformative learning occurring in adolescents, given the right environment and support. Thus, further research examining the transformative potential in adolescents attending non-mainstream educational settings is needed to address this potential gap. The aim of this research could be to determine whether it is maturity as opposed to age that is the determining factor.

It seems that the most serious impediment to creating lasting change through the Choice Theory course is ensuring that those taking it have opportunities to maintain their ability to practice using the skills on a regular basis. Exploring ways in which this might be accomplished could certainly be an avenue for further research. A larger embedded case study involving several other alternative and/or mainstream schools in order to compare how they differ in their transformative capacity might also be an interesting extension to this study. Best practices for transformative potential could be generated that could serve transformative-education-oriented administrators and teachers in structuring both alternative and mainstream school environments.