"Tracing the Threads of Paulo Freire's Philosophy in the Fabric of Transformative Learning"

Karen Mooney

Professor Barbara Gleason

English C0865

April 29, 2014

Tracing the Threads of Paulo Freire’s Philosophy

in the Fabric of Transformative Learning

Paulo Freire created and shared a vision of a just world in which education held a central place. For him, learning was emancipatory for the individual and the society at the same time, and he reimagined education in a way that could transform both. Freire’s experience and theories helped spark what would become Transformative Learning, though none of its proponents have developed systems that are as comprehensive or ambitious. Yet an examination of some of the leading strains of Transformative Learning reveals that, although a kind of ideological splintering has occurred, all of Freire’s ideas remain alive in the aggregate.

Paulo Freire’s life work was, above all else, the articulation of a theory of human nature. Humankind, he felt, has the unique ability to plan and shape the world, but this agency is under constant threat from a multitude of dehumanizing forces. Freier’s seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, begins there, stating that a person must be or become Subject, rather than Object. He explains that the individual must be an actor or agent, rather than a recipient of action  (67).

For Freire, education held a singular role in the ongoing process of becoming more human and of preserving human dignity. In a more formal educational setting, the learner must not see him or herself as the object of a teacher’s action in a “banking” transaction, that is, a process in which a teacher deposits information into an empty shell where it resides until the student can regurgitate and employ it in a social system that is static, oppressive, and dehumanizing (Pedagogy 72). Instead, teachers and students must become partners in a process in which knowledge is neither given nor transferred, but created. The first task of their horizontally-arranged interaction is for each participant to become conscious of the ways in which they are oppressed (consciousness raising, or conscientizacao ) (Pedagogy 67) and then to act upon those observations; this dynamic interaction of reflection and action Freire called praxis (Pedagogy 51). Together the learner and facilitator engage in a problem-posing dialogue about the “problems of human beings in their relations with the world” (Pedagogy 79). This process de-mythicizes reality, that is, it reveals the social conditions in which the person lives as they truly are, not as they are portrayed by those who hold self-serving power. This liberatory educational process, whether practiced in a formal or informal setting, is the foundation of freedom and indeed, is its practice: to be free one must be learning, and to learn one must be free (Pedagogy 81).

Freire insists that “the pursuit of full humanity cannot be carried out in isolation or through individualism but only in fellowship and solidarity” (Pedagogy 85). Dialogue is the method. Freire disapproves of social liberalism and of liberal democracies that place a high value on an individual’s freedom to act as he or she wishes, and that see their full expression in competitive, market economies. For Freire, the goal of learning was not just individual freedom but social change as well, and therefore it is innately political. But his aim was higher still: ultimately, he was convinced his approach could create “a world in which it was easier to love” (Pedagogy 40).

            Freire gave life to his thought with a particular method of teaching illiterate adults how to read. Based on his experience in rural Brazil in the 1960’s, he devised a three-stage system in which a team of educators first spent time with adults in their community discovering the words that had practical and emotional meaning to them, words that he called generative. Second, the team selected the most powerful of those words and used them as the foundation of a literacy program, breaking them down into syllables as the building blocks of reading. (Education for Critical Consciousness 44) Third, a parallel effort involved the development of critical consciousness through dialogue around a series of images that Freire called “codifications.” These images, like the generative words, are derived from what is meaningful in the lives of the learners. They portray various scenarios of people in relation to their world in order to reveal the notion of culture, that is, the distinction between nature and the world of people. Problem-posing discussion about these codifications encouraged the learners to see themselves as distinct from the natural world, as makers of culture, and as agents in the world (Education for Critical Consciousness 47). The codifications also reveal themes of “limit situations” in the people’s lives, situations that limit their full expression as free humans, and in so doing foreground the powers that keep them from becoming fully human. In this way, the learners’ social consciousness and ultimately political consciousness is raised (Pedagogy 99).

Freire’s literacy pedagogy can and has been applied by others to teach a variety of academic content while raising consciousness, too. In 1979, Nan Elsasser worked with women in a writing course at a junior college in the Bahamas, helping them to choose a generative theme (marriage) that focused their literacy work and inspired social observation, too (Fiore and Elsasser). K.O. Ojokheta reports on a less successful endeavor to use Freire’s three-stage process to teach Nigerian adults to read. In this instance, students withdrew before the final stage--actually learning to read. In Ojokheta’s observation, however, the students did succeed in probing generative words about government corruption and mismanagement of the nation’s resources to raise their consciousness about the social issues that framed their lives.  

Scholars have come to describe Freire’s approach to learning as social-emancipatory. He was a philosopher whose sweeping view of the world led him to see a dual mission in education, not just individual transformation but social transformation as well. His prolific thought and writing helped radically alter the conventional notions of student, teacher, and of education itself. While these ideas have subsequently influenced all of education, they have been particularly significant for the field of adult education. Freire inspired many leaders in this field, most notably Jack Mezirow.

Transformative Learning

If Paulo Freire’s approach to learning was social-emancipatory, Jack Mezirow’s  approach is deemed psycho-critical. But he, too, begins with a broad notion of human purpose and the role of education in fulfilling it.

A defining condition of being human is that we have to understand the meaning of our experience. For some, any uncritically assimilated explanation by an authority figure will suffice. But in contemporary societies we must learn to make our own interpretations rather than act on the purposes, beliefs, judgments, and feelings of others. Facilitating such understanding is the cardinal goal of adult education. Transformative learning develops autonomous thinking. (Mezirow, Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice 5)

In this passage, one can see Mezirow’s debt to Paulo Freire, including critical reflection, informed action, and the notion of adult education as facilitating rather than directive. For Mezirow, “Transformative learning is the process of effecting change in a frame of reference,” (Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice 5) those frames of reference defined as the broad structure of assumptions through which a person understands his or her experience.  Critical reflection and critical self-reflection, primarily rational acts, are the key to transforming these assumptive frames. Mezirow approached this process through the lens of cognitive and developmental psychology.

Mezirow came to his theory of transformative learning in the 1970’s while conducting a qualitative study of women returning to postsecondary study or the workforce after an extended absence. He sought to identify factors that helped or hurt their learning (Kitchenham 5). This early experience lead him to believe that adults need to become aware that they are caught in their own history, that is, to see the cultural and psychological assumptions, what he called “meaning perspectives,” that keep adults from growing. The path of maturity is “a developmental process of movement…toward meaning perspectives that are progressively more inclusive, discriminating and more integrative of experience” (Perspective Transformation 106).

Whereas Freire created a groundbreaking new view of teaching with which Mezirow concurred, one that was based on meaningfulness and a discursive model, Mezirow focused his attentions on the nature of learning itself. He built on Habermas’s distinction between two types of learning: instrumental, how to do or perform something in accommodation to the world as it is; and communicative, which he found to be of much greater significance to adults (How Critical Reflection Triggers Transformative Learning 4). Mezirow describes this type of learning as the process of “understanding the meaning of what others communicate, concerning values, ideals, feelings, moral decisions, and such concepts as freedom, justice, love, labour, autonomy, commitment, and democracy” (How Critical Reflection Triggers Transformative Learning 5). Because this type of learning seeks meaning, it is the domain of adults. Meaning becomes learning when it is used to make decisions or to act (How Critical Reflection Triggers Transformative Learning 1). In this, one can hear an echo of Freire’s notion of praxis.

In fact, Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning shares four pillars with Friere: the centrality of the learner’s experience, critical reflection, discourse, and perspective transformation. In this process, the learner, grounded in his or her own experience, examines unquestioned beliefs and assumptions, reflects critically upon them through discourse, and undergoes a perspective change that yields a new understanding of the self and world. For Mezirow, transformation is not necessarily sparked by a teacher or mentor, but rather by a series of incremental changes in the adult’s perspective or as a result of a personal or social crisis (Merriam 6). Although discourse with peers or teachers is part of his schema, Mezirow’s focus remains directly on the individual; transformation can occur one person at a time and without any corresponding examination or demand for change in the society at large. This absence is a significant departure from Freire’s philosophy.

Mezirow further delineates the psychological and cognitive characteristics of the learning process, describing ten phases of the transformative learning experience, beginning with a disorienting dilemma, moving through re-examination, and resulting in a new orientation and a new understanding (Transformative Learning in Practice 19). The stages of critical reflection involve personal examination of feelings of guilt and shame, and a “critical assessment of epistemic, sociocultural, or psychic assumptions” (Kitchenham 105) through rational discourse. Like Freire, Mezirow believes dialogue plays an essential role in communicative learning. Because learners benefit from assistance in this critical examination and in developing habits of reflection, Mezirow sees learning as a social process (Transformative Learning in Practice 10), but one that is finite, concluding with reintegration after the original crisis is resolved.

Although perspective transformation can be initiated by an individual alone and remains focused on the individual, Mezirow sees discourse as an essential part of the process and details the role of the teacher or learning facilitator in it. In his view, the teacher’s responsibility is to create an environment in which effective discourse, and therefore the transformative experience, can occur. That environment would ideally provide a sense of safety, openness and trust; accurate and complete information; be student-centered; and use problem-solving activities and critical reflection (Transformative Learning in Practice 10). The adult educator should also set standards that “significantly reduce the influence of power, the deficit model associated with instrumental learning, and win-lose discourse” (Taylor 12).           

While Freire saw education as transforming both the individual and the society, Mezirow does not link them so purposefully. He writes, “Perspective transformation can be individual, as in psychotherapy; group as in Freire’s ‘learning circles’ (1970) or in ‘popular education’ in Latin America; or collective, as in the Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War, or Women’s Movements” (The Theory and Practice of Transformative Learning 9). In fact, the women’s movement was one of his inspirations: it was both a frame of reference and a source of funding for his original study of women returning to the workplace (Transformative Learning in Practice 19). But in Mezirow’s schema, it is not essential to question the social conditions themselves--the circumstances into which the learner is integrating--and no process for collective social action against structural inequalities. In a fundamental departure from Freire’s philosophy, a basic examination of power in society is not part of Mezirow’s system (Tennant 34).

Since his orientation was toward psychology and not pedagogy, Mezirow did not focus on curricula. He did, however, devise a schema of strategies for the classroom, and he gathered studies of transformative learning in practice in some of his writings, including in the workplace, church settings, Alcoholics Anonymous postpartum classes, and other settings (Dirkx 4). Although the transformative learning approach was embraced by many adult educators, it wasn’t until 2009 that Mezirow and Taylor wrote and compiled Transformative Learning in Practice: Insights from Community, Workplace, and Higher Education, a book which gathers in one place a useful selection of writings on practice.

One criticism that has been leveled against Mezirow is that he underrated the impact of the emotional, spiritual, and extra-rational dimensions of human behavior and the affective realm as a source of deriving meaning (Drikx 5). Unlike Freire, who devoted significant attention to fear, hate, love, and the role of emotion, aspiration, and spirituality in the learner’s experience, Mezirow emphasized the rational and scientific. His approach, though rooted in human psychology, rarely goes beyond the rational. However, many scholars have since taken his transformative learning theories into a broader and more holistic sphere.

Psycho-developmental, Cultural-Spiritual, and Race-Central Views

It is in embracing the affective domain and a deeper psychology that some of the more interesting developments in transformative learning have come, restoring some of the spirit of Freire’s worldview. The psycho-developmental view, as described in the works of Boyd and Meyers, Cranton, and Dirkx uses the lens of psychology, as Mezirow does, but also countenances the role of relationships, contextual influences, and a broader, holistic way of knowing beyond the purely psychological (Merriam 7).

Particularly as developed by Boyd, this variant of transformative learning draws upon the depth psychology of Carl Jung, focusing on the lifelong journey of individuation and the process of tapping into deeper psychic structures and the collective unconscious (Taylor 20). Transformative learning here is not triggered as much by a single event or focused on a single goal. It relies much less on discourse and rational reflection, in fact, language is not the only path toward understanding: “Self-knowledge, or knowledge of ourselves and the world, is mediated largely through symbols rather than directly through language” (Dirkx 7). Dreams and art processes are explored as a path toward meaning-making and bringing to consciousness deeply seated drives and processes. The dialogue involved is intrapersonal, more than interpersonal, even when its goal is a deeper understanding of particular subject matter, but certainly when it is focused on understanding one’s relation to the world.

Neither Boyd nor other proponents of this psycho-developmental view have addressed themselves to pedagogy, though it has inspired many classroom teachers. While this version of a transformative learning experience would be firmly centered in the individual’s experience, it would look toward symbolic forms in daily life: “These forms include story, myths, rituals, dance, poetry, music, metaphor, images, fantasy, and dreams” (Dirkx 8). 

Another variant of transformational learning is the cultural-spiritual orientation. Like the psycho-developmental approach, it looks deeply within the individual toward what may broadly be called the life force within every person for the source of meaning and learning, but it sees a connection between that spirituality and the individual’s social context.  One’s spiritual wellspring, however defined, connects the person to his or her culture and identity, helps mediate among multiple identities, and may become a driver of group social transformation (Tisdell and Tolliver 372). The cultural-spiritual orientation restores to the practice of transformative learning the deep spirituality that infused Paulo Friere’s own philosophy.

Particularly prominent in the works of Brooks and Tisdell, the cultural-spiritual approach focuses on the “connections between individuals and social structures...and notions of intersecting positionalities” (Merriam 8). It is a “culturally relevant and spiritually grounded” approach that encourages group inquiry and narrative reasoning. Its recognition of storytelling and narrative development harks back to Freire’s codifications, and the combination of social context with a spiritual dimension embraces his original sweeping view as well. Departing from Mezirow’s view, the cultural-spiritual orientation downplays the role of the rational and of critical reflection, seeing transformation, in fact, as an extra-rational process in which knowledge arrives through symbols (Baumgartner 18).

The race-centric approach to transformative learning is perhaps closest to Freire’s in its view that social change must take place alongside the individual’s transformation. As presented by Williams, Sheared, Johnson-Bailey, and Alfred, the race-centric approach puts the experience of those of African descent in the foreground of the learning experience. This view is “culturally bounded, oppositional, and non-individualistic” (Merriam 9). Like Freire and Mezirow, the race-centric approach values and engages the student’s lived experience but does so within a particular sociocultural, political, and historical context. It is not so much about self-actualization, as is the psycho-development view, but about belonging, inclusion, and parity. For some, the race-centric approach embraces a spiritual one as well because “African American social change movements have often rested on a strong religious or spiritual foundation” (Tisdell and Tolliver 373).

Tisdell and Tolliver write of transformational learning classroom practices that reflect a spiritual and at times racial character. Derise Tolliver views her classroom as a “sacred space where the learners’ more authentic selves…can show up and be honored” (386). She creates it as such by embracing her own identity--dressing colorfully, dancing if she feels moved to, quoting proverbs from her African heritage--and inviting others to celebrate their spiritual and cultural selves as well. She begins class with a centering exercise; employs food, decorations, and symbols; and engages in rituals of celebration (386). Libby Tisdell begins her classes with a short activity that invites students to check-in their learning joys and difficulties since the last class meeting. She employs symbols of the elements of the world in her classroom to remind her students of their connections to the world, and she encourages them to write their own cultural stories. Each semester ends with a ritual that includes song, poetry, dance, art, and ideas, during which all participants suggest their next steps of action on their path of change (387).

Conclusion

With his sweeping philosophy of the world and of education, Paulo Friere reoriented the view of adult education away from the mere acquisition of skills and toward a model of human authenticity that involved both individual and social emancipation. Jack Mezirow looked to Freire in developing his theory of adult transformative learning, but was guided by development psychology and remained focused on the individual in a primarily rational process. Boyd, Dirkx and the others who have embraced the psycho-developmental model of transformative learning look deeper into the psyche for the wellspring of imagination and creativity and see intrapersonal dialogue as a driver of that process. Those, like Brooks, Tolliver, and Tisdell, who espouse a cultural-spiritual model, also look deep within the person but toward a spiritual rather than a psychological construct. They see this deep resource and the artifacts it produces as both a product of identity and a mechanism that links with the community. A more recent model of transformative learning looks toward race and other contested views of identity for the spur to personal and social transformation and sees those two domains as operating hand-in-hand.

Freire’s worldview and writings influenced and embraced all of these various notions of transformative learning and each of them keeps a part of his philosophy alive. What unites all of these theorists, as well as those involved in transformative learning whether as learner or facilitator, is a deeply-held drive to effect change toward authenticity and dignity, whether it be in one individual or in society as a whole. Intentionally or not, those who engage in this transformative enterprise take part in the noble act, as the saying goes, of bending the arc of history toward justice.

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