Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning: Essays on Theory and Praxis

290 Pages·2002·2.67 MB·English

by  Edmund O’Sullivan

Expanding the Boundaries
of Transformative Learning
Praise for
Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning:
“The rates of social change, the movements of the world’s people, industrializa-
tion, globalization, and militarization continue to escalate at an ever-accelerating
pace. Educators face an unprecedented task. They must support people to be-
come highly creative, collaborative, problem solvers, and critical thinkers. They
must cultivate people’s capacities to see the world from profoundly different per-
spectives. They must nourish people’s capacities for connection and caring in a
fragmented and divisive world. The authors of the essays in this volume have
been wrestling with all of these questions. They push our thinking forward.
Nothing is more important.”
—Mary Field Belenky, co-author of
Women’s Ways of Knowingand A Tradition That Has No Name
“If we are to prevent global disaster, we need a totally different way of educat-
ing our children. The essays in this book take us an important part of the way
toward the transformation we need.”
—Rabbi Michael Lerner Editor,
TIKKUN Magazine and author,
Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul
“This is truly a unique book. It challenges us to transform ourselves and our
planet by being aware of the creative cosmic power that flows through our-
selves and the universe we inhabit. Too often, alas, we abuse this power. These
authors ask us to look deeply into our souls through ‘others’’ piercing eyes—
those who represent our spectrum of humanity from activists to spiritualists.
Such a vision will transform all who read these essays.”
—Wm. E. Doll, Jr., Vira Franklin and J.R. Eagles
Professor of Curriculum, Louisiana State University
“Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning offers a new vision of global
community and new strategies for political struggle. It is a book that does not
limit social transformation to the narrow confines of the classroom, but lo-
cates learning in the larger arena of mind and spirit. The authors put praxis
into the service of rebuilding a world devastated by global capitalism; it is a
project that confirms how decolonizing pathways to the human heart can be
instrumental in the larger anticapitalist struggle ahead.”
—Peter McLaren, Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Expanding the Boundaries
of Transformative Learning
Essays on Theory and Praxis
Edited by
Edmund O’Sullivan
Amish Morrell
Mary Ann O’Connor
EXPANDINGTHEBOUNDARIESOFTRANSFORMATIVELEARNING
© Edmund O’Sullivan, Amish Morrell, and Mary Ann O’Connor, 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-0-312-29507-3
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2001 by PALGRAVETM
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Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE is the new global publishing imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC
Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly
Macmillan Press Ltd).
ISBN 978-1-349-63552-8 ISBN 978-1-349-63550-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-63550-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Expanding the boundaries of transformative learning : essays on
theory and praxis / edited by Edmund V. O’Sullivan, Amish Morrell, Mary Ann
O’Connor
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-29508-0 (pbk.)
1. Critical pedagogy. 2. Postmodernism and education. I. O’Sullivan, Edmund,
1938- II. Morrell, Amish. III. O’Connor, Mary Ann, 1956-
LC196.M85 2002
370.11’5—dc21
2001057531
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Letra Libre, Inc.
First edition: May 2002
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Transferred to Digital Printing in 2008
Contents
Acknowlegments vii
Contributors ix
Introduction xv
Amish Morrell and Mary Ann O’Connor
1. The Project and Vision of Transformative Education:
Integral Transformative Learning 1
Edmund O’Sullivan
2. What Is Curriculum Anyway? 13
Matt Maxwell
3. Feminist Perspectives on Globalization
and Integrative Transformative Learning 23
Angela Miles
4. The Right to a New Utopia: Adult Learning and
the Changing World of Work in an Era of Global Capitalism 35
Budd L. Hall
5. From Opposition to Alternatives:
Postindustrial Potentials and Transformative Learning 47
Brian Milani
6. Transformative Learning and Transformative Politics:
The Pedagogical Dimension of Participatory
Democracy and Social Action 59
Daniel Schugurensky
7. The Signature of the Whole: Radical Interconnectedness
and Its Implications for Global and Environmental Education 77
David Selby
8. Learning from a Spiritual Perspective 95
John (Jack) P. Miller
9. The Labyrinth: Site and Symbol of Transformation 103
Vanessa Compton
10. Spiritual Knowing and Transformative Learning 121
George J. Sefa Dei
vi
11. African Women and Spirituality:
Connections between Thought and Education 135
Njoki Nathani Wane
12. Journey of Our Spirits:
Challenges for Adult Indigenous Learners 151
Renee Shilling
13. Toward Transformative Learning:
Ecological Perspectives for Adult Education 159
Darlene E. Clover
14. Transforming the Ecology of Violence:
Ecology, War, Patriarchy, and the
Institutionalization of Violence 173
Eimear O’Neill and Edmund O’Sullivan
15. Transformative Learning and Cultures of Peace 185
Anne Goodman
16. Transforming Research:
Possibilities for Arts-Informed Scholarship? 199
J. Gary Knowles and Ardra L. Cole
17. On Speaking Terms Again: Transformation of the
Human–Earth Relationship through Spontaneous Painting 215
Lisa M. Lipsett
18. Traces and Transformation:
Photographic Ambiguity and Critical Histories 229
Amish Morrell
19. Transformative Learning and New Paradigm Scholarship 241
Mary Ann O’Connor
20. The Transformative Power of Creative Dissent:
The Raging Grannies’ Legacy 257
Carole Roy
Index 273
Acknowledgments
When the idea of this volume first materialized as a project for the Transformative
Learning Centre, the sense of anticipation that we were about to embark on a jour-
ney with many of our colleagues at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at
the University of Toronto gave an energy and excitement to our undertaking. It was
one thing asking your colleagues to contribute an article to the collection of essays
that you were planning, it was another thing getting those articles, reading and
commenting on them and then asking for the changes that were part and parcel of
the responsibilities we had as editors for what has turned out to be a rich and com-
plex set of offerings in a field that is in the making. Indeed in the view of the editors
of this volume, Transformative Learning is a field in the making.What all of us, as edi-
tors of this undertaking, hoped for at the outset was that we would tap into the en-
ergy and creativity of our colleagues and to be able to encourage them to write on a
topic that would also be on the cutting edge of their own scholarly passions and
commitments. We would like to acknowledge and thank our colleagues at the On-
tario Institute for Studies in Education for their chapters that they have written in
this volume. We would also like to thank the Transformative Learning Centre at
OISE/UT, which encouraged our efforts throughout this undertaking. Finally, we
would like to thank Luciana Costa for her painstaking copy editing work here in
Canada and to Michael Flamini, Amanda Johnson, and Donna Cherry of Palgrave
Macmillan in New York for their encouragement of the work and for their editorial
and production assistance.
Amish Morrell
Mary Ann O’Connor
Edmund O’Sullivan
Toronto, Canada
February 2002
Contributors
DARLENE CLOVER, Ph.D., coordinated two international research projects for the
Transformative Learning Centre from 1993 to 1999. She is currently an assistant
professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia in the Faculty of Educa-
tion and the School of Environmental Studies. Darlene’s research and teaching fo-
cuses on environmental adult education, feminist adult education, women and the
environment, and women and the arts.
ARDRAL. COLEis a professor in the Department of Adult Education, Community
Development, and Counseling Psychology and Coordinator of the Centre for
Arts-informed Research. She teaches courses in teacher development, teacher in-
quiry, qualitative research methods, and arts-informed research methods. Her re-
search interests and areas of professional and scholarly work are teacher
knowledge and learning, teacher education reform, Alzheimer’s disease, and qual-
itative research methods, especially autobiography, life history, and arts-informed
inquiry and representation.
VANESSACOMPTONis an artist and educator currently pursuing a doctorate in the
Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning Department at the Ontario Institute for Stud-
ies in Education of the University of Toronto with a focus on holistic and aesthetic
education. She recently published an article in the Journal of Experiential Educationthat
describes the interplay between the elements of transformative process—fire, brim-
stone, poetry, and myth—in her bronze-casting workshops. For alchemy of a differ-
ent kind, she introduced and cofacilitates the Labyrinth at St. Paul’s Westdale
(Anglican) Church in Hamilton, Ontario, and writes extensively of the signs and
wonders arising from community involvement with sacred public art. Her long-term
goals are to develop curriculum for a New School of Chartres and to let loose her
inner Mahalia Jackson.
GEORGEJ. SEFADEIis professor and associate chair, Department of Sociology and
Equity Studies, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University
of Toronto. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of antiracism educa-
tion, development education, international development, Indigenous knowledges,
and anticolonial thought. He is the first president of the Ghanaian-Canadian
Union, an umbrella group of Ghanaian-Canadian cultural, ethnic, and religious as-
sociations in Ontario. He has served as the president of the Canadian-Ghanaian
Organization (now Cross Edge Network) and is on the board of trustees of the
Harry Jerome Scholarships Awards of Canada. Currently he is working on a research
project on minority education in comparative contexts.
x CONTRIBUTORS
ANNEGOODMAN(Adelson) comes from South Africa, where she was active in the
anti-apartheid struggle. She has a doctorate in peace education from the Ontario In-
stitute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her areas of research,
interest, and practice include peace and reconciliation in Africa, especially South
Africa, peace education, trauma healing and reconciliation, the culture of peace, nu-
clear issues, and ethnic identity and conflict transformation. She has taught at the
Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and at the
Transformative Learning Centre of OISE/UT. She has a long history of involve-
ment with the environmental, women’s, and peace movements and was a member of
the National Working Group for the International Year for the Culture of Peace.
She is a founder and active member of an international project called Voice of So-
mali Women for Peace, Reconciliation, and Political Rights.
BUDDL. HALLis dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. He
is a cofounder of the Transformative Learning Centre and former chair of the Adult
Education and Counseling Psychology Department at the Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Budd’s special interests are in
participatory research and social movement learning. His most recent book,
coedited with George Dei, is Indigenous Knowledges in Global Perspectives: Multiple Readings
of Our World (University of Toronto Press, 2000). He is also a poet.
J. GARYKNOWLESpractices art-making and educational inquiry so that, in his life, the
two may become one day soon a seamless fabric of professional work. As codirector of
the Centre for Arts-informed Research (located within the Department of Adult Ed-
ucation, Community Development and Counseling Psychology at the Ontario Insti-
tute for Studies in Education) of the University of Toronto, he encourages graduate
degree candidates to take artistic and intellectual risks in their research and be counted
as arts-informed scholars. His educational scholarship is located in educational jour-
nals and books as well as found hanging on walls. Recently, with Lorri Neilsen and
Ardra Cole, he edited The Art of Writing Inquiry (Backalong Books, 2001), and, with
Ardra Cole, wrote Lives in Context: The Art of Life History Research(AltaMira, 2001).
LISAM. LIPSETT, Ed.D., is a writer, painter, and ecological educator whose work fo-
cuses on artful human–Earth reconnection. She is on the faculty of the Muskoka
Healing Arts Teaching Center in Huntsville, Ontario, where she teaches ecologically
based spontaneous painting and artful self-care. She is also a founding member of the
Center for Arts-informed Research at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
of the University of Toronto. Her chapter in this book is part of her doctoral thesis
entitled On Speaking Terms Again: Transformative Experiences of Artful Earth Connection.More
of her writing and art work can be found at the Artemeter Gallery (www.artemeter.com).
MATTMAXWELLis a singer/songwriter/recording artist, educational consultant and
teacher based in Bowen Island, British Columbia. He received his doctorate at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto where he
worked closely with Jack Miller, David Selby, and Edmund O’Sullivan. He has pub-
lished articles on second-language acquisition, ecological education, and alternatives
to technology-based curricula. He can be reached at [email protected].