Transformative Learning Theory in the Practice of Adult Education: An Overview.

Transformative learning has emerged within the field of adult education as a powerful image for understanding how adults learn. It has attracted researchers and practitioners from a wide variety of theoretical persuasions and practice settings, yet it is a complicated idea that offers considerable theoretical, practical, and ethical challenges. What transformative learning means and how it is best fostered within formal learning settings varies considerably, depending on one’s theoretical perspective. My purposes here are to provide a better understanding of this complexity by summarizing what I consider to be the major theoretical perspectives or strands of transformative learning evident in the field; to identify what, as a whole, this literature suggests about adult learning as transformational; and to explore implications for our role as educators in this process. The Idea of Transformative Learning Transformative learning reflects a particular vision for adult education and a conceptual framework for understanding how adults learn. Both the vision—the overall aims and values which guide our practices— and the conceptual framework represent sharp departures from what many practitioners have traditionally held to be the aims and processes of adult learning. The great majority of practice within North American adult education is guided by an instrumental view of the learning process, one that is designed to foster change as a form of adaptation. Within this view adult learning is understood largely as a means of adapting to the John M. Dirkx is Associate Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education and Co-Director, Michigan Center for Career and Technical Education, Michigan State