Slow-Looking at Transformative Learning Through the Lens of Enactivism

Abstract

Jack Mezirow’s (1978, 1991, and 2008) transformative learning (TL) theory was developed with transforming society in mind. However, that intent has been overshadowed by a dominant focus on individual transformation and a rational cognitive approach to critically assessing assumptions as the path to transformation. We (the authors) wonder what happens to the societal side of TL theory when we put it in dialog with enactivism. Reading TL theory in this way illuminates the interdependent intention that self and society are inextricably linked. This conceptual article proposes that TL theory is best understood as an ongoing process of transforming ways of knowing, doing, and being through dynamic intra-actions, ontological entanglements, and appreciation of we-ness. Slow-looking at the implicit intra-actions that TL theory is grounded on will contribute to decolonizing the dominant dualistic view of seeing self and society as separate, making the potential for transformation of self and society more visible.

Keywords

transformative learning adult learning enactivism

Introduction

We are living in interesting times. It is a strange recognition that adults are living through a time of ongoing tumult, producing disorientations that challenge outdated structures, including humans and more-than-human interactions. In the United States, we live in a polarized society where divisions are becoming more divisive. Social polarization and division are not limited to the increasing economic inequality between the haves and have-nots; they also denote the expanding segregation of social relations and mindsets (Kwon & Nicolaides, 2019). Feminist and adult education scholars (e.g., Bordo, 1986; St. Pierre, 2016, 2019) have argued that people have been governed by the dualism of seeing the world (e.g., self/others, mind/body, men/women, white/black, able/disabled, human/non-human, rational/emotional, epistemology/ontology, and culture/nature) based on the outdated assumption of ontological independence (e.g., self and others are ontologically independent). The binary necessitates on one side privileged and the other marginalized (Coston & Kimmel, 2012). We (authors) wonder why these binaries continue to prevail. Why do they last so long? Their endurance is surprising in a world opening to the relational entanglements of humans and more than human intra-actions that are becoming obvious, visible, and slowly rising to the surface of our shared realities. When we think about the potential for transforming this binary, we turn to the theoretical grounding of Jack Mezirow’s transformative learning (TL) theory (1978 and 1991), which was aimed at putting self and society to work together to continue the democratizing process of making self and society more permeable, just, and open to evolution.

In the field of adult education, Mezirow’s TL theory was firmly rooted in the humanist desire for structural social change through individuals’ perspective transformation. The TL theory has been and continues to be regarded as a powerful tool to interpret individuals’ learning when they face disorienting dilemmas, to transform their perspectives, and reintegrate new viewpoints and ways of taking up their role in society in more complex ways (Yorks & Nicolaides, 2013). Perspective transformation is the process of becoming critically aware of how and why our assumptions have come to constrain the way we perceive, understand, and feel about our world; changing these structures of habitual expectation to make possible a more inclusive, discriminating, and integrative perspective and, finally, making choices or otherwise acting upon these new understandings (Mezirow, 1991).

Mezirow (1978, 1991, and 2008, 2012) and researchers studying TL have continued to revise and expand the initial formulation of the theory that privileged the rational cognitive approach to transformation through critical self-reflection. More recent studies have underscored the importance of affective, relational aspects of TL, including emotion, empathy, feelings, and intersubjectivity (e.g., Maisese, 2017; Mälkki, 2010, 2012; Mälkki & Green, 2014; Perry, 2021). Recent studies emphasize the ontological, relational aspects of TL, particularly through a transformative sustainability learning framework (e.g., Hyde, 2021; O’Neil, 2018; Walsh et al., 2020). In doing so, TL theory continues to evolve and advance beyond individual and cognitive perspectives of transformation while getting closer to achieving its original aspiration of transforming self and society.

Following recent attempts to develop the theory, we aim to provide alternative readings of TL theory by looking at the theory through the lens of enactivism. Enactivism is grounded in the field of cognitive sciences, reflective of a philosophical stance where cognition emerges through dynamic relational entanglements between organisms—human and more than human—and the world we live in. Enactivism aims to co-create a we-ness (e.g., interdependence), which is the degree to which individuals, embedded in a variety of contexts, perceive their intra-active connectedness with all that matters (e.g., we/us/our) rather than as separate independent entities (e.g., I/my/me or it/its) (Brinck et al., 2017; De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007; De Warren, 2017; Topcu-Uzer et al., 2021). We employ the concept of intra-active from a feminist approach to quantum theory (Barrad, 2007) that informs matter, meaning, “matter is substance in its intra-active becoming—not a thing, but a doing, a congealing of agency. Matter is a stabilizing and destabilizing process of iterative intra-activity” (Barad, 2003, p. 822). According to Barad (2007), “Matter matters” (p. 210) and how people intra-actively entangle with other matter (material-discursive practices producing phenomena) yields insight “that distinct agencies do not precede but rather emerge through, their intra-action” (p. 33). Enactivism desires genuine social agency where collective solidarity and shared intentions are developed (Brinck et al., 2017; De Warren, 2017). Enactivism may also contribute to developing the interdependent dimensions (i.e., self and society) of adult learning theories by providing “more complex and inclusive understandings of collective potential and human becoming” (Perry, 2021, p. 351).

Our purpose in this conceptual article is not to amplify the limitations of Mezirow’s TL theory but to advance the theory by slow-looking at it again through a different perspective to uncover ways to make possible the original commitment of the TL theory—societal transformation. Enactivism, whose purpose is creating a we-ness and genuine social agency with affective, relational, and ontological approaches, can help us look more creatively and differently to understand TL (Maiese, 2017). In what follows, we pause to discuss our understanding of enactivism as well as discuss some recent studies that illuminated affective, relational, and ontological features in TL. We conclude this writing by considering what we see when we look at TL through the lens of enactivism, which may help make the facets of transforming society more visible.

Enactivism

Enactivism is a way of understanding how all organisms organize themselves and interact with their environments (Begg, 2013). Enactivism understands that all organisms, including human beings, continuously change structures through a fluid and mutual awareness between the body and the world (Holton, 2010; Justice et al., 2020). Through these relationships, organisms and the environment coordinate themselves and change each other in non-predictable ways (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007; Van den Berg, 2013). Similar to the complexity and ecological theories, enactivism focuses on complex systems where life creates its contexts as a result of relationships that bind components of the system together, not each component itself (Sumara & Davis, 1997). Complexity and ecological theories regard the world as open, emergent, mutually dependent systems. Following this worldview, enactivism understands humans and more than human organisms as ontologically related, entangling components of an emergent coupled system rather than ontologically independent, static parts of a closed system.

Enactivism focuses more on affective, relational, and ontological characteristics rather than rational, individual, and epistemological traits. In particular, affection has a significant and primitive role in social relationships because affectivity lets one pre-reflexively relate with others by allowing the sensation of connection and relationship to emerge without a deliberate process (Luo & Gui, 2022). Thus, affectivity is enacted and extended in the process of a hybrid social interaction (Colombetti, 2014). In that way, “an ongoing interaffective space” (Tewes et al., 2017, p. 5) can be created. For example, in the classroom, one of our (authors) shared contexts, the classroom itself extends the affective entanglements between student, facilitator, and each of their unique contexts, allowing for new knowledge, insight, and perceptions to take form (Nicolaides et al., in press).

Further, enactivism believes that “matter is inherently ontologically indeterminate” (Fenwick et al., 2011, p. 33), which means that organisms and environments are also ontologically relational. In this vein, enactivism examines how ontologically relational organisms are enacted and entangled together (De Jesus, 2018; Fenwick et al., 2011), for instance, in the context of encountering complexity in the form of adaptive challenges (e.g., the COVID pandemic) that demands new learning disquieting habits of sense-making amplifying the unknown in ways that are felt and uncomfortable. During the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was uncomfortable with the uncertainty and precarity that it generated. However, all human and more than human felt and understood that the pandemic affected all of us, and no one knew how to respond to it. However, focusing on ontological entanglement (i.e., we are all in this together but not in the same way) does not mean that enactivism rejects epistemological understanding. Enactivism challenges the historical dualism of understanding knowledge from either a dualism that separates epistemological ways (e.g., how the knowledge is represented and understood) from ontological ways (e.g., what constitutes the knowledge through a process of becoming) (Li et al., 2010). The pandemic disrupted all our ways of knowing, doing, and being in ways that ruptured the dualism of problem-solving and solution-seeking based on past knowledge (Nicolaides & Lim, 2020).

Enactivism is regarded as a distinct philosophical perspective on cognition (Fenwick et al., 2011), which can be differentiated from other philosophical perspectives. From the words of enactivists, cognition is the “enactment of the world and mind” (Varela et al., 2016, p. 9), embodied action (De Jaeger & Di Paolo, 2007;De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007; Fenwick et al., 2011), and closely intertwined with emotion (Haosheng et al., 2021). From an enactivist lens, cognition is both (en)active and affective, not only individualistic or rational (Maiese, 2017). Enactivists move away from the view of cognitivism that defines cognition as an information-processing activity in one’s brain regarding knowledge that can be reduced to understanding that only sits inside the individual’s head. Also, enactivists oppose the assumption of constructivism that individuals are separate from the external world and have the authority to decide truth by organizing and re-organizing frameworks for interpreting the world (Sumara & Davis, 1997). Thus, Heras-Escribano (2021) situated enactivism under the umbrella of post-cognitivism. Enactivism can also be differentiated from behaviorism, even though action, body, and behavior are significant in both enactivism and behaviorism (Holton, 2010). Whereas behaviorism highlights the roles of physical bodies and actions due to the limitations of mental processes (e.g., inaccessible and invisible), enactivism accentuates the body because physical and mental processes are assumed to be dependent and not separable (Holton, 2010). Also, whereas behaviorism posits one direction (e.g., from the environment to individuals), enactivism believes in multiple directions—individuals and the world can co-produce and co-create through mutual interactions (Holton, 2010).

Putting Enactivist Learning and Social Transformation in Conversation

Enactivism regards learning as the emergence of collective cognition in relation to the environment (Fenwick et al., 2011). Learning is understood as relational, contextual, and emergent. Enactivism views that any binary perspective on learning needs to be more complex to understand holistic learning since enactivism posits knowledge as dynamic emerging from structured coupling where systems collide and change each other (Li et al., 2010). In light of enactivism, Di Paolo and De Jaegher (2022) proposed to understand the dynamic relations between knowing-doing-being with enactive ideas (e.g., engaging, sense-making, and becoming) from a holistic perspective, which may contribute to dismantling pervasive dichotomous thinking embedded in learning processes (i.e., the process of TL). Enactivism challenges the anthropocentric viewpoint, which focuses on how humans epistemologically construct knowledge. A pervasive epistemological understanding of learning decontextualizes knowledge and skills from practice (Dall’Alba & Barnacle, 2007). Enactivism emphasizes entangled, embodied, and ontologically relational learning and entities situated in the world, not the individual. Accordingly, enactivism may provide a paradigm shift from “ways of knowing or representing” to “ways of practicing/doing/enacting” (De Jejus, 2018, p. 879) in adult learning and education.

Adult education scholars have explored enactivism as a perspective to understand the dynamics of learning (e.g., Fenwick, 2000; Lundgren et al., 2017) in relation to complex social and organizational systems (e.g., Justice et al., 2020; Maiese, 2017; Sumara & Davis, 1997). Fenwick et al. (2011) introduced enactivism as one of the five perspectives on cognition to understand the nature of experiential learning—constructivist, psychoanalytic, situative, critical cultural, and enactivist—and highlighted that enactivism supports adult learners' approach to learning within complex systems by co-emerging collective knowledge. The enactivist perspective enabled adult education researchers to rethink the concept of reflection. For example, Lundgren et al. (2017) conceptualized reflection based on Fenwick’s (2011) five perspectives. They advocated for an enactivist perspective on reflection that helps ongoing, co-emerged, co-evolved, and embedded within complex systems. Justice et al. (2020) criticized traditional ways of reflection (e.g., reflecting “on” experience), assuming that reflection (thinking) and experiences (acting) could be separable and then suggested enacting reflection— “reflection is active engagement in, by, and through experience to workplace complexities” (p. 320, italic as original).

Through mutual entanglement and enactment between organism and the environment, enactivism advocates for co-creating we-ness and genuine social agency where group solidarity and shared intentions are developed (Brinck et al., 2017; De Warren, 2017). Unlike the serial collective, whose agencies are atomized without any genuine reciprocal relationships, the genuine collective has shared values and we-ness that can prevent self-other distinctions (Brinck et al., 2017; De Warren, 2017). The genuine collective may co-create genuine social agency co-resisting ableism, racism, (hetero)sexism, and other oppressive-isms, based on the shared intentions and group solidarity that allyships are built whether the self belongs to women and or historically excluded groups. This means that the enactivist lens can contribute to co-dismantling the dualist and independent mindset, separating self from others and co-promoting social justice. The enactivist lens can contribute to advancing TL theory and practice by vitalizing the self and society relationship embedded in the foundational assumption that the transformed self transforms society.

Troubling Transformative Learning Theory

Coined by Mezirow (1978), TL theory is a “living” theory of adult learning. His original theorizing emerged from his qualitative research follow-up surveys on U.S. women participating in re-entry college programs. As a result, his research team found that the women participating in the programs experienced a personal transformation and suggested ten phases of TL (see, for detail, Mezirow, 1978). Mezirow (1978) noted:

A woman becomes a transformation learner when she realizes how the culture and her own attitudes have conspired to define and delimit her self-conception, her lifestyle, and her options in terms of a set of prescribed, stereotypic roles. As a result of recognizing these taken-for-granted cultural expectations and how they have shaped the way she thinks and feels about herself and her relationships, the transformation learner comes to identify her personal problem as a common one and a public issue. (p. 15)

Later, Mezirow (2008) defined TL as “the process by which we transform problematic frames of reference (mindsets, habits of mind, and meaning perspectives)—sets of assumption and expectation—to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective, and emotionally able to change” (p. 26). He presented a revised version of TL, arguing that a frame of reference is synonymous with meaning perspective, delineating and selectively shaping our perception, cognition, and feelings (Mezirow, 2008). Perspective transformation comprises habits of mind including various dimensions: sociolinguistic, moral-ethical, epistemic, philosophical, psychological, and esthetic, which set our behaviors and mental activities programmed (Mezirow, 2008). According to Mezirow (2008), “Habits of mind become articulated in a specific point of view—the constellation of belief, memory, value judgment, attitude, and feeling that shape a particular interpretation (p. 26) and are composed clusters of meaning schemes “that tacitly direct and shape a specific interpretation and determine how we judge, typify objects, and attribute causality” (Mezirow & Associates, 2000, p. 18). Whereas habits of mind are abstract and broad, points of view are more accessible to awareness and feedback from others (Mezirow, , 2008).

Even though Mezirow (2008) admitted that he disregarded the importance of emotion, intuition, and imagination in the process of TL, he still maintained rational, non-political, and individual characteristics based on a constructivist perspective. He stated that political thinking is not primary, and the influence of context may be rationally assessed because the critical dimension of TL is reflective judgment, and adult learners develop their capacities in a predictable way (Mezirow, 2008). Each concept in his theory (e.g., frame of reference, meaning perspective, habits of mind, points of view, and meaning schemes) is still highly individual, rational, and epistemology-oriented. Recently, researchers pointed out the limitations of over-reliance on an individual, cognitive, and rational approach to TL and illuminated affectivity, relational ontology, and complexity in TL (e.g., Faller & Marsick, 2023; Hoggan et al., 2017; Lange, 2018; Lynam et al., 2022; Maiese, 2017; Mälkki, 2010, 2012; Mälkki & Green, 2014; Perry, 2021; Pope & Nicolaides, 2021). Since enactivism highlights affectivity and relational ontology, we introduce the studies in the next section as a starting point to entangle TL theory with the lens of enactivism.

Affectivity in Transformative Learning

Studies that criticized TL theory focus their critique on the rationality-centered understanding of TL and underscore the importance of affectivity, including emotions, empathy, feelings, and intersubjectivity. For example, Mälkki (2010, 2012) investigated emotional features in TL. Mälkki (2010) connected cognition and emotion in explaining the early stages of TL. She suggested that individuals instinctively cleave their existing meaning perspective and stay in the comfort zone that can avoid painful reflection for making meaning. However, edge-emotions (e.g., unpleasant feelings) start to emerge at the edge of the comfort zone when their meaning perspective becomes challenged. Individuals can enter the start stage of TL, disorienting dilemma, only after accepting the edge-emotions coming from their problematic assumptions. If their meaning perspective is questioned by the environment, they may make their perspective more flexible, but someone following pleasant emotions may choose to remain in the current status quo (Mälkki & Green, 2014).

In a similar vein, Mälkki (2012) presented reflection-after-reflection, which is reflecting on others’ assumptions when individuals face emotionally chaotic experiences because their transformed perspective collides with the views of important others, creating a disorienting dilemma in the social dimension. Individuals can manage conflict by considering others’ situations and positions with an open mind and empathy. Empathy plays a significant role in TL because it increases learners’ ability and opportunity to identify with others’ perspectives and shared understanding by decreasing the possibility of prejudgment and facilitating critical reflection through emotional connections (Cranton & Taylor, 2013). Thus, empathy is needed for trust, solidarity, and security (Yorks & Kasl, 2002), which may facilitate TL. Thinking with enactivism, we illuminate the significance of understanding the intertwined role of interacted and extended emotional facets of learning, which facilitate and enable TL.

Emotion, however, does not play a significant role only in the early stage but also engages in all stages of TL. Further, emotions can be extended and are not limited to individuals. Feeling and empathy are vital in extending and interlacing relationally affective domains. Perry (2021) introduced participatory feeling based on Heron’s (1992) whole-person theory. According to the whole-person theory, emotions and feelings are differentiated. Although emotions are observable and unintentional expressions, feelings are more participatory in that they connect individuals to others unconsciously, even those who do not share the same experiences. Participatory feeling may facilitate TL by increasing openness and perceiving interdependent beings.

Affection cannot detach from our body since one’s affection is expressed through the body (e.g., facial expressions and body language), and bodily senses can determine one’s affection (Heron, 1992). In this sense, Maisese (2017) insisted that TL should be both affectively and cognitively oriented and understood as a dynamic bodily process from a neurobiological perspective. Then, she suggested viewing frames of reference as habits of thinking-and-feeling, considering that learning can occur beyond awareness due to intuitive and affective features. With the understanding of “the body as an emotional sensorium” (Maisese, 2017, p. 207), where organisms notice their surroundings and make meanings with an enactive cognitive process, the affective understanding of TL will help individuals detect unconscious bias as well as be more sensitive to power systems.

Studies accentuating relational, affective aspects of TL also take note of intersubjectivity. Hoggan et al. (2017) said that “the human experience is first and foremost intersubjective” (p. 54), which means that it is impossible to separate the individual from the social and cognition from emotion. In this vein, Perry (2021) highlighted critical subjectivity in TL as an extended form of intersubjectivity. Then, she criticized rational discourse that is likely to disregard social inequalities because critical subjectivity only emerges from within a social, relational context, such as conflict, desire, and hope, all aspects of seeking ways to respond to complex challenges such as the pandemic we discussed earlier.

Relational Ontology in Transformative Learning

From the viewpoint of enactivism, all of us (e.g., organisms and matters) are in a world of ongoing intra-actions, combining in emergent and enacted ways (Fenwick et al., 2011). Recent studies have noticed ontological aspects neglected in Mezirow’s TL theory. For example, Mälkki and Green (2014) noted that TL is “ontological in nature” (p. 11). Through reviewing the literature on TL, Hoggan (2016) defined ontological change as “changes in the way a person exists in the world, the deeply established mental and emotional inclinations that affect the overall quality and tone of one’s existence” (p. 71) and described it as one of the significant outcomes of TL.

Transformative sustainability learning (TSL) is a representative perspective that approaches TL based on relational ontologies. Relational ontologies postulate that all entities, including organisms and matters, emerge from their constitutive relations, so “no entity pre-exists the relations that constitute it” (Walsh et al., 2020, p. 1591). The TSL is also significantly impacted by Barad (2007), who coined agential realism, understanding that “phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting components” (p. 33). Although TSL studies acknowledged that both epistemological and ontological changes are needed for TL (Hyde, 2021; O’Neil, 2018; Walsh et al., 2020), it is notable that they foreground an ontological approach in TL.

For example, Hyde (2021) tried to entangle the ontology of constructionism and epistemology of constructivism in TL with the notion of ethico-onto-epistemology, coined by Barad (2007), referring to “the inseparability of ethics, ontology, and epistemology when engaging in knowledge production, with scientific practices, and with the world itself and its inhabitants” (p. 381). Hyde (2021) described critical reflection as a constructivist epistemological practice and critical discourse as a constructive ontological practice in TL. Since critical discourse is an emancipatory process from taken-for-granted social roles through validating emergent discourses among the participants, it helps us to interact in the world ontologically. Reflecting on his past practices focused on critical reflection, Hyde (2021) encouraged adult education facilitators to underpin critical discourse and critical reflection when designing learning activities.

Further, O’Neil (2018) proposed an ontological shift from the epistemological shift to reach a sustainable level of TL. O’Neil (2018) explained that the epistemological approach, grounded upon a constructivist or social constructivist paradigm, resorts to a consciousness of humans. He argued that epistemological approaches of TL would lead to temporal change, given that our learning emerges beyond our conscious level of thinking. However, the ontological approach can include unconscious, intra-active relations in learning, which enables long-lasting TL with ecological and relational processes (O’Neil, 2018).

Meanwhile, Walsh et al. (2020) emphasized a relational approach to TL for sustainability by describing a case study with a curriculum based on the relational model of knowing, being, and doing in the context of sustainability. Walsh et al. (2020) reported that participants could create personal, societal, and ecological transformations through embodied learning and building ontological connections and relationships with nature. Given that enactivism highlights ontological relationships with environments and organisms, it is reasonable that TSL is on the same page as enactivism in highlighting ontological entanglements in TL.

Besides TSL, more studies illuminate ontological entanglements in TL. Mälkki and Green (2014) utilized the term liminality to describe the “in-between zone where all that was once stable has become fluid” (p. 8). Mälkki and Green (2014) explained that liminal experiences as a transitional zone to consider an ontological change with existential choice due to disorientation from interacting with a different culture. Although their notion of liminality does not stem from enactivism or related philosophy, it helps understand how interaction with the cultural environment can lead to TL, especially existential change.

Recent TL scholars noted the interdependence between self/individuals and others/systems in the midst of complexity (Faller & Marsick, 2023; Lynam et al., 2022; Pope & Nicolaides, 2021). Pope and Nicolaides (2021) found that the long-time members of a community-based interfaith group developed I-Thou (self-other) relationships through TL, which were genuine relationships based on dynamic relatedness through “supportive ontological encounters” (p. 119). Although the group consisted of members from different religions, over ten years of interfaith dialog among members defined their relationship as “kindred spirits” (Pope & Nicolaides, 2021, p. 124). This finding empirically unfolds enactivism’s postulation that multiple ontologies are entangled and enacted. Similarly, based on 16 years of experience in the generating transformative change program, Lynam et al. (2022) developed the I/We model to support both individual and collective TL. Their model shows how to interpenetrate I/we dichotomy through fully inhabiting and expressing themselves through opening the boundaries of identity and inter-relating the world, deepening dynamic collaboration with environments, and presenting themselves through deliberate engagement in the emerging future.

Even though the ontological approach is essential in profound and ongoing learning, it has yet to be substantially addressed in TL studies. An enactivist perspective that looks at TL illuminates the dynamic interaction between individuals and environments as they co-create and co-evolve learning and change (Faller & Marsick, 2023). We wonder what we see when we look at TL with enactivism.

Enactive Transformative Learning Dynamics

When we look at TL with enactivism, we see movements, dynamics, and how interdependent intra-actions already present in TL theory are vitalized. For example, the assumption that a transformed self transforms society becomes illuminated when enactivism shines a light on the relational entanglements that are already there in processes that may create a transformation of self that eventually transforms society. As we read and talked about what we were seeing as a way to trouble our own proclivity towards binaries, we began to use the label enactive transformative learning dynamics (ETLD) to distinguish an ongoing relational process of transforming ways of knowing, doing, and being through dynamic intra-actions, ontological entanglements, and appreciation of we-ness, that make self and society different. Figure 1 demonstrates how we put enactivism and TL in dialog, letting us see how ETLD might work to capture the continuous unfolding of transformation. The right side of the figure shows the intra-actions, entanglements, and appreciations between organisms, and the left side of the figure shows ETLD affectively, holistically, and ongoingly transforming ways of learning: knowing, doing, and being.

Figure 1.

Illuminating transformative learning dynamics through enactivism.

ETLD illuminates the movements involved in the process of holistic transformation through affective framing. Mezirow’s TL theory is grounded upon epistemic perspectivism, given that the theory centers (while aspiring for societal transformation) on the individual cognitive level of transformation. If we explain TL resorting to transforming perspective, it will likely miss unconscious, embodied learning deeply embedded in our body and spirit. Although some studies revealed ontological change as a result of TL, such as a change in the way of affectively experiencing the world (Yorks & Kasl, 2006), most studies on the process and outcome of TL foregrounded epistemological transformation. ETLD illuminates the holistic process of change, including ways of becoming, especially through dynamic intra-actions, ontological entanglements, and an awareness of we-ness.

Dynamic intra-action is a core concept of enactivism, in that enactivism is a way of understanding the entanglements of organisms and environments. Dynamic intra-action encompasses emergent feelings and empathy in interaffective spaces (Tewes et al., 2017). The process engages the affective domain, blending the boundary of cognition and emotion (Maisese, 2017). Becoming captures the dynamic intra-active process of combining that blurs binaries we have become so accustomed to, such as body/mind, self/society, and I/we (Barrad, 2007; Braidotti, 2022). This process approach is ontological in that what matters is more than one form of reflection, cognition, and interpretation. Dynamic intra-action notices that there is no self in society without there being a society for the self to become in; there is no mind alone without a body, and there is no I if there is no context of family, community, and ecology (we spaces) for an I to exist in. The recognition of this relational plane is filled with relational entanglements that are always catching on the material of making meaning that is essential in TL (Nicolaides, 2022). Think of TL ontologically as facilitated through the combining of affective mutual feelings of self and others’ minds as well as reflectively transforming points of view. Adult learners may transform their ways of knowing, doing, and being through feeling themselves with others as a mutual exchange (intra-actions). The dynamic intra-actions are a form of ontological entanglements; ontologically relational organisms and environments are entangled, coordinated, and co-evolving. Ontological entanglements (i.e., combining knowing, doing, and being across and within all contexts, such as self and society) may transform ways of being in reciprocal ways. Ontological relationships can be extended and intertwined among organisms that vitalize planes of intra-action. In the process of becoming, other organisms are engaged because they are already there. One cannot be something without the engagement of other organisms and environments.

As the process of unfolding continues, awareness of we-ness (i.e., ontological combining/entanglement) facilitates ETLD by engaging in dynamic intra-actions and ontological entanglements. Awareness of we-ness means recognizing interdependence with contexts by eliminating the self-other distinction and transcending personal boundaries (Brinck et al., 2017; De Warren, 2017). Beyond the edge of one’s own view, organisms may finally be able to be ontologically related to others (entangled in felt ways). We are familiar with epistemologically perceiving others and understanding others’ perspectives, feelings, and behaviors within their own view. This is how people usually epistemologically form a relationship with others. However, ontological relationships require one to stand at the boundary of a perspective while simultaneously viewing and interrogating one’s identity. In this space (i.e., on the edge of oneself system), one can question viewpoints embedded in one’s dominant culture. Awareness of we-ness does not let us separate ourselves from worlds and experience transpersonal learning, thereby ontologically intra-acting, related, and entangled. For example, I, one of the authors, three years into the pandemic, the COVID virus continues to reshape itself when after the three years of escape, I caught COVID and was in the dance of isolation and keeping my family and loved ones safe from transmission. It became very clear to me that my relational attunement towards my elder parents who live with me, and my partner governed what actions to take. Having the privilege to isolate myself in a space at a distance from my elder parents and my partner recovering from surgery became a sign of my privilege. I was one who could, while so many could not, take action to protect others and continue to work remotely. The Pandemic spread because the binaries prevail; haves and have-nots.

From the epistemological and constructivist orientation of TL, the learning process can change a frame of reference and habits of mind. That may or may not become more expansive and inclusive of multiple selves (Illeris, 2009). When we think with enactivism, we notice that paying attention to the dynamics of the potential for self and societal transformation is a way to experience and face a difference that makes a difference (Barad, 2007) that foregrounds mutual intra-actions that inquire ongoingly about assumptions and identities. ETLD privileges the relational, connected, and intra-active ways of learning connectively. TL is aspirational in that the transformation process may lead to a profound, sustainable personal change that eventually can make a difference in society in a not predictable way (Brookfield, 2000). ETLD features and shows the more fluid and inherently evolving movement of learning that is continuously becoming. A posture of inquiry that is always on the move is what enactivism illuminates in TL.

The dynamics, the entanglements, and the combining may catalyze the kinds of self-transformation that make a difference in society. The interdependence of self and society is a relationship that holds hope for difference through mutually influencing intra-actions. This hope may capture Mezirow’s original intention to transform society and “… attend to the dynamics of the whole, and nested systems as much as possible” (Lange, 2018, p. 291).

Conclusion

Research about TL is shifting to include and embrace new philosophies and new tools to think with theory and imagine new ways of understating how transformation makes a difference that matters. This article presently shows that TL theory can be repatterned from an enactivist viewpoint. Enactivism makes visible the intersections of relational, emotional, and ontological aspects of TL entangled more intentionally.

Enactivsm encompasses the dynamic flows of learning by softening the boundaries of knowing, doing, and being through intra-active participation in learning. The aim is to vitalize contexts that foreground enactive relational dynamics that may catalyze TL. Educators are invited to imagine new ways to design educative spaces that facilitate multiple ways of knowing, being, and doing in dynamic and fluid ways (Nicolaides, 2022). Integrating embodied learning can be encouraged by recognizing the interconnectedness of body-mind-spirit in ways that invite these identities to be in relationship with other people (Hocking, 2004) through whole-body engagement (Gallagher & Lindgren, 2015). Expressive ways of knowing through expressive activities such as storytelling, drawing, or dance (Maisese, 2016; Yorks & Kasl, 2002) would also help surface mutually transformed learning environments that activate learners’ ways of becoming. Reading TL with enactivsm enabled adult educators to reimagine a more dynamic and fluid approach to learning as transformation (Nicolaides et al., 2022).

We conclude with Lange (2019), who classified three approaches of TL by levels of change: macro (social), meso (transpersonal and institutional), and micro (individual) level. Situating Mezirow’s TL theory at the micro-level of change, Lange (2019) argued that in order to facilitate more transformative change, all levels must be activated and included dynamically. We offer our reading of TL with enactivism as a way to conceptualize the multiplicity of transformation, activating many ways of existence (individual) through dynamic interactions, ontological entanglements, and awareness of we-ness (mutuality) that may let emerge conditions for self and societal transformation.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Eunbi Sim

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