Transformative learning and identity formation on the ‘smiling coast’ of West Africa

This paper outlines research undertaken during a study visit to The Gambia (2008) and our thinking about the value of this, and other such visits for education students. The qualitative methodology made use of interviews and reflective journals. We argue that such visits may have the power to transform peoples’ values and, drawing on literature on identity and positioning, we tentatively suggest some possible explanations for such transformative processes. This kind of experience is thought to be of considerable potential benefit to beginning teachers and the paper indicates some of these benefits, with illustrations drawn from interview data.     

Transformative learning in managerial role transitions

The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of learning in work role transitions from specialist roles to managerial roles in a context of a large international technology organisation. Prior theorisation of learning in role transitions has been based on quantitative, psychologically-oriented studies prescribing different role and personal attributes related to work adjustment. Personal experiences have received only a superficial or instrumental part in most of the preceding studies. Therefore, this study draws upon a transformative learning theory to outline an interpretative framework and focuses on in-depth, narrative analysis of a small number of role transition experiences. As a result, the study reveals how first-time project managers and team leaders wonder about their abilities and actions; compare ‘self’ with role models; and become aware of the power aspect of managerial roles. Such reflection eventually leads to a perspective transformation regarding ‘self’ and new roles. However, it also involves adaptation to the prevailing organisational norms, values, and leadership ideals. The study will add to our understanding of learning in transitions and inform those working in the human resource development or otherwise involved in the organisational transfer processes. Moreover, it reminds that perspective transformations should not be taken innocently as examples of ‘empowerment’, but critically concern why transformative learning is encouraged at work nowadays and what purposes it serves.     

Transformative learning approaches for public relations pedagogy

Public relations educators are frequently challenged by students' flawed perceptions of public relations. Two contrasting case studies are presented in this paper to illustrate how socially-oriented paradigms may be applied to a real-client project to deliver a transformative learning experience. A discourse-analytic approach is applied within the case studies as a technique for identifying changes in students' understandings of the ideological structures, power relations and knowledge systems that underpin public relations and for determining whether transformative learning has taken place. The discourse engagement and normative/critical/ethical paradigmatic orientations examined in this paper provide conceptual foundations for developing civic responsibility that needs to be underpinned by salient social theory.     

Transformative power of the learning object debate

This article examines the significance of how learning objects have come to be conceptualized and utilized, particularly in higher education. While many articles critique the term and its origins, an examination of the role metaphor plays in our conceptualization of ‘data’, ‘information’ and ‘learning objects’ helps us move beyond a fixation on the term to its promise and challenges. Although much has been written about how learning objects should be developed, accessed and stored, much less has been written about how they should be designed and used. This quest for understanding of the role learning objects will play in the future of learning leads to new strategies which encompass such issues as a reusability, knowledge management, efficient infrastructure design and innovative course design.     

Transformative learning meets Bildung: An international exchange

International Review of Education -     

Transformative learning in designing algorithms for reporting information systems

This paper describes a teaching method that enables students to design efficient and effective algorithms for reporting information systems applications. Adopting the general principles of transformative learning, students are immersed in a series of activities and interventions to enable learning. The activities provided opportunities for students to design algorithms, also using knowledge gained during the interventions. The interventions allowed students to gain knowledge about the output data structures such as list, table, and cube; the sequence control structures that may take different execution times; and the assumptions such as source data tables and mapping rules—all of which can contribute to the design of efficient and effective algorithms. 88 undergraduate business students in an advanced information systems course learn the principles of designing algorithms through critical reflection and reinterpretation consistent with the principles of transformative learning. The algorithms designed by students reveal that attention to the output data structures, sequence control structures, and assumptions enables the design of efficient and effective algorithms.     

Exploring connections between identity and learning

Abstract

Learning is situated in the practices of communities, such that children learn by participating in the communities they inhabit. Learning through participation in the practices of a community influences interpretation of and engagement with the social world, and has implications for the identity of the learner as a participant in a community. In this article, the connection between learning and identity will be explored from a sociocultural perspective. Children participate in many communities and must appropriately generalize learning across communities such as home and school. Research in the connection between identity and learning in schools will be reviewed because in many countries where schooling is mandatory it is an important context for this generalization. Then the paper will explore the choice of when and how to generalize across contexts and whether this choice is conscious. Lastly, the paper will propose some ways that the connection between learning and identity may complicate this generalization.     

Conceptualizing identity,learning and social justice in community-based learning

This paper explores the process of learning to become a social justice teacher, drawing in particular on Bakhtin’s notions of dialogue in order to theorize pre-service teachers’ identity negotiations. Interpretations of learning and identity are based on the content of pre-service teachers’ narratives about community-based learning. Supported by theoretically-sensitive ways of conceptualizing identity and social justice, the author develops an understanding of the ways pre-service teachers shape their identities through participating in community events. Implications for teacher education, in terms of the design and pedagogic practices, are presented with the intent of enabling the realization of social justice teacher education.     

Transformative learning of mentors from an immigrant workplace connections program

Mentorship programs have been deployed within immigrant and settlements services to integrate newcomers to the Canadian labor market. These programs are often assessed for their impacts on immigrant mentees. Little attention has been paid to how they may have influenced mentors. In this context, this study, from the perspective of transformative learning, examines the experiences of 19 mentors who were involved in a mentorship program designed to enhance the employment prospects for immigrant professionals in Canada. Findings indicated that in the process of mentoring immigrants with diverse backgrounds, mentors engaged in both informational and transformational learning. Through informational learning, the mentors expanded their cultural and work-related knowledge, hence their life horizons. For some mentors, their learning was also transformational. Some developed new awareness of and relation to the self. Some also started recognizing the structural and cultural barriers facing newcomers, and sometimes taking actions to effect social change. Both kinds of learning – informational and transformational – we argue, may contribute to disrupting relations of inequality between newcomers and the host society. The study suggests ways through which mentoring programs can contribute to a two-way process of integration involving changes and learning for both newcomers and the host society.     

Transformations at work: identity and learning

This paper examines how identity and learning are constituted and transformed at work. Its central concern is how individuals engage agentically in and learn through workplace practices, and in ways that transform work. Drawing upon recent research into work and participation in workplaces, the negotiated and contested relationship between workplace practices and individuals' identity and intentionality, and learning is illuminated and discussed. For instance, aged care workers and coal miners acquire work injuries that are almost emblematic of their work identity. Only particularly dramatic events (i.e. serious illness or workplace accidents) wholly transform their identity and views about work practice—their subjectivities. However, it is through the agentic actions of these individuals that workplace practices can be transformed. Yet individuals' agentic action is not necessarily directed to the abstracted and de‐contextualized economic and civic goals privileged in lifelong learning policies. Instead, there is relational interdependency between the individual and work that can act to sustain or transform both self and their work. Individuals' agentic action is exercised within these relations in ways directed by their subjectivities. So these relations and that agentic action have policy and practice implications for the conduct of work and learning through and for work.     

Gender,identity and culture in learning physics

Student engagement in science, as defined by Iva Gurgel, Mauricio Pietrocola, and Graciella Watanabe, is of great importance because a student’s perceived compatibility with science learning is highly influenced by personal identities, or how students see themselves in relations to the world. This can greatly impact their learning experiences. In this forum, I build on the work of Gurgel, Pietrocola, and Watanabe by exploring the relationships between engagement in physics and gender, and by looking at the expansive nature of the concept of culture. I expand the conversation by investigating ways in which learning science has impacted my own identity/worldview, particularly how it affects my personal teaching and learning experiences. I focus the conversation around the relationship between gender and the experience of learning science to further the dialogue concerning identity and how it impacts engagement in science. I also look at the role of didactic transposition in the perceived disconnect with science. I reveal my experiences and analysis through a personal narrative.     

Transformative learning and concepts of the self: insights from immigrant and intercultural journeys

This article examines Canadian immigrant and intercultural learning as an insightful context for examining transformative learning. Theories of intercultural communication are explored, particularly the concept of transculturality and Bhabha’s concept of ‘Third Space’. Various concepts of the self are also compared, particularly two conceptions implicit in theories of transformative learning, the autonomous self and the relational self. Finally, three empirical studies from Canada are reviewed and findings discussed regarding the transformative process of learning into transculturality as well as the relational self and relational knowing in transformative learning.     

Negotiation of learning and identity among first-year medical students

The demand for medical schools to produce competent doctors to meet health needs in South Africa has increased. In response to this challenge, the Faculty of Health Sciences at a relatively elite university introduced a problem-based, socially relevant curriculum in 2002. The classroom environment is designed to facilitate a learning context where students from diverse backgrounds engage critically and learn from each other. This study draws on data from a larger qualitative case study to describe how a group of ‘black’ students who failed their first semester experienced the school–university transition. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, this article analyses how the students negotiated learning and identity. The argument is made that the students re-positioned themselves in deficit, outsider subject positions in order to survive their first year. This article ends with a consideration of the implications for developing a learning environment which recognises difference and fosters diversity.     

Transformative Education

Universities aspire to offer students a transformative experience, but rarely spell out the nature of this transformation. In this essay, L. A. Paul and John Quiggin frame the successful university education as transformative in the philosophical sense. They explain the way that a successful college education can be understood as generating an individual conceptual revolution, and thus, as a transformative experience. Education can create epistemically transformative change through the process of developing critical thinking skills, leading to conceptual replacement and the discovery of new intellectual frameworks. This epistemic transformation, if deep enough, scales up into a personal transformation. After explicating the nature and structure of transformative education, Paul and Quiggin show how understanding transformation in terms of personal change and awareness of unawareness clarifies the debate over its value.     

Transformative Valuing

In this essay, Randall Curren addresses four basic questions about transformative experiences in education: Is education necessarily transformative? What must education provide for it to be personally transformative? What standard should educators use in determining whether engaging students in potentially transformative experiences is beneficial or justified? How should schools and educators orchestrate opportunities for beneficial transformative experiences? The focus is on transformative valuing, but also on the importance of a fully transformative nexus of personal attributes and social pathways to living a transformed life. Curren argues that educational decisions on behalf of students can be justified on the basis of necessary goods that persist through transformative changes in what is contingently good for them, and that schools' efforts to orchestrate opportunities for transformative experiences should engage students in activities that can be eudaimonic for them.     

Developing pre-professional identity in undergraduates through work-integrated learning

Pre-professional identity is a complex phenomenon spanning awareness of and connection with the skills, qualities, behaviours, values and standards of a student’s chosen profession, as well as one’s understanding of professional self in relation to the broader general self. It is an important, yet under-explored, aspect of graduate employability and can influence academic success, well-being and productivity. This study investigates the role of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL), more specifically work placements, in developing pre-professional identity among undergraduates. It uses qualitative data, in the form of structured reflections, gathered over two time periods from 105 business students in a Western Australian university. Findings indicate that work placements can offer a valuable platform for fostering identity construction. Students use the experience to make sense of their intended profession through observing, questioning and interacting with seasoned professionals. Appraising and reflecting on their experience, through learning activities and assessment, are highlighted as important elements of placement design and critical for students to question and make sense of what they observed and learned. Strategies are presented for industry and education practitioners to enhance pre-professional identity development among undergraduates. The study underlines the important role of work placements in preparing students for graduate-level employment, beyond the traditional focus on non-technical skill development and the application of disciplinary knowledge.