Questions After Reading “Transformative Learning Theory,” by Edward W. Taylor, in Third Update on Adult Learning Theory

Questions After Reading “Transformative Learning Theory,” by Edward W. Taylor, in Third Update on Adult Learning Theory

     My understanding of transformative language is still very sketchy. It will take more reading, more discussion, and more time before I can create a three-dimensional concept of it that I can truly own. As I go down that path, and while reading Edward Taylor’s chapter entitled “Transformative Learning Theory” in Third Update on Adult Learning Theory, I have been chewing on a couple of very basic questions.

     The first is to question why transformative learning is “uniquely adult” (5). One of its key premises (as I vaguely understand it now) is that learning is a process of a revising frames of reference to come to a new understanding (perspective transformation). Why wouldn’t a child come to the learning experience with well-formed frames of reference, based as they might be on more basic needs and drives and on comparatively little life experience, and why wouldn’t that learning experience challenge and transform the child’s understanding of the world just as it does an adult’s. Doesn’t the child engage in some kind of critical experience as he or she undergoes a shift in learning? My own observation is that even small children question. Yes, the process for a child may be mostly unconscious, but they act on it, too. Is consciousness the single most important feature of transformative learning--does the adult have to be clearly conscious of how their understanding is changing? And if so, what does it mean for that adult to be “conscious”—does he or she have to be able to articulate it in words? To me, that seems to be the same verbal bias that seems to prevail in all scholarship, no matter the subject. Does transformative learning embrace alternative expressions?

     My second big question has to do with the connection between the transformative learning process and particular learning content. Is transformative learning a kind of “meta” experience occurring on top of, and possibly separate from, information that a person might be or want to be learning, a lens with which to look at the process? I was taken aback to read at the end of Taylor’s chapter that “there is little known about the impact of fostering transformative learning on learner outcomes (grades, test scores).” (13) Really? I would never suggest that all learning can be judged by tests or grades. But how can there have been decades of research and, I assume, practice using transformative educational philosophy without any curiosity about whether or not adults are actually learning more or better because of it? Is it transformation for transformation’s sake? Yes, life is constant change and we all want to understand more about our lives and be better at what we do, but doesn’t research have some responsibility to assess whether that’s actually happening with this approach to learning?

   I am hoping that reading some of the original texts on this subject and discussing it more in class will help answer some of my questions.