Transforming Perspectives in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education (eBook)

A Dialogue

Laura Formenti, Linden West (Autoren)

eBook Download: PDF

2018 | 1st ed. 2018
XVII, 323 Seiten
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-319-96388-4 (ISBN)

Infos

This book constructs a deepening, interdisciplinary understanding of adult learning and imaginatively reframes its transformative aspects. The authors explore the tension at the heart of current understanding of 'transformative' adult learning: that while it can be framed as both easy and imperative, personal transformation is in fact rooted in the context in which we live, our stories and relationships.

At its core, transformation is never easy - nor always desirable - and the authors thus draw on interdisciplinary and auto/biographical inquiry to explore what it means to change our presuppositions and frames of meaning that guide our thinking. Using their linguistic, gendered, academic and cultural differences, the authors illuminate how the social, contextual, cultural, cognitive and psychological dimensions of transformation intertwine. In doing so, they emphasise the importance of transformation as a contingent struggle for meaning and recognition, social justice, fraternity, and the pursuit of truth.  This engaging book will be of interest to students and scholars of transformative learning and education.

Laura Formenti is Professor of General Pedagogy and Director of the PhD programme 'Education in Contemporary Society' at Milano Bicocca University, Italy. Her research uses autobiographic, cooperative and transformative methods to enhance critical thinking and dialogic collective transformation. Chair of the European Society for the Education of Adults (ESREA), she jointly convenes the Life History and Biography Research Network.

Linden West is Professor of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. His research has focused, auto/biographically, on racism and fundamentalism, professionals in demanding social contexts, and young families in programmes like Sure Start. He helps coordinate the ESREA Network.

Inhalt

Preface 7
Acknowledgements 12
Contents 13
List of Figures 15
1 Landscapes of Transforming Perspectives 16
Introducing ‘Trans-formation’ 16
Consumerism 21
Laura: My Learning Biography, Life Transitions and the Systemic Perspective 24
Linden, Desire Beyond Fragments 30
The Structure of the Book 34
What Do You See? A Metalogue on Difference 42
Ideas Around This Metalogue 48
2 Form and Formlessness 50
Troubling Liquidity: An Outsider’s Perspective 52
Bauman Meets Bateson: Is It Still Possible to Learn How to Learn? 58
Challenges for Education: Giddens and Morin 63
Ways Forward 66
3 On Perspective 68
Introduction 68
Transformative Learning as a Theory and Community: A Compositional Reading 71
Perspective Transformation in Mezirow’s Work 73
From Content to Context 76
A Therapeutic Learning? 78
A Practical Theory and Its Developments 80
Perspective: A Visual Metaphor 81
A Footnote 87
4 Critical Perspectives on Transformation 89
Psychoanalysing Critical Theory? 91
The Frankfurt School 93
Troubling Transformative Learning 95
Illuminating the ‘Critical’ in Transformative Learning: Mathew, a Case Study 99
How Can We Read This Story, Critically? 104
Conclusions and Openings 108
Walking Out of a Doll’s House? A Second Metalogue 110
5 A Difficult Business 116
A Biographical Pessimism? 123
The Structural Model 124
A Bad Press 127
Literature 127
A Broad Church: Object Relations and Intimate Perspectives on Transformation 130
Education and Psychoanalysis: Chalk and Cheese? 142
6 Soul Work 143
Jung, Libido and the Divine in Us 144
Spielrein and Embracing Mutual Transformation 147
Into the Dark: Dante’s Journey of Death and Rebirth 149
Transformative Learning and Education: A Pedagogy of Transformation 154
A Case Study: The Transformative Play of the ‘Feminine and Masculine’ in Learning to Be a Doctor 156
Wanting to Be a Psychiatrist 158
Recovering Roots: How Telling One’s Story Entails Soul Work 159
Conclusion: Transformative Learning as Soul Work 162
7 Body Matters 164
Sofia and Clues into a Transition—Laura’s Tale 165
Multiple Levels of Learning 168
A Relational Perspective and Learning in the Proximal System 174
Family Learning 177
Dis-connection: An Epistemological Mistake 179
Difference, Outlines and the Limits of Human Perception 181
After Bateson: The Contribution of Complexity 183
As Observing Systems, We Are Compromised 184
From Trivialization to Complex Education 186
To Conclude 188
8 Popular Education and Democratization 191
Collective Disorientating Dilemmas 195
Leaders, and Beyond: A (His) Story of Workers’ Education 196
Workers’ Education and the Struggle for Democratic Transformation: Richard Henry Tawney and Raymond Williams 198
Tawney, Fraternity and the Idea of Social Transformation 199
An Experiment in the City 200
Raymond Williams, Building a Common Culture of Transformed Meanings 204
Freire, and Dialogic Transformative Action: Two Case Studies and Feminist Critiques 206
Italy, the ‘Two Churches’ and a Peaceful Popular Education 209
Danilo Dolci and Aldo Capitini the Utopian Dream of a New Society
Social Transformation in the Seventies: The 150-Hours Scheme and Movements 215
Many Women 220
Concluding Thoughts 222
9 Imagine 224
Every Woman Is an Artist: An Autoethnographic Exploration (Laura) 228
Linden, the Role of Story and Every Man (or Woman?) as a Performance 232
Abduction and the Reasons of the Heart 235
Composition and Contemplation: From Materiality to Self-Reflexivity, to Dialogue 237
The Need for Imagination in Education, and a Case Study 243
Conclusions 246
10 The Spirit of Transformation 250
Slippery and Illusive Territory 250
The Power of Myth, and Ambivalence Towards Religion 254
Logos, Mythos and Religion 254
Spirituality and Sacredness Beyond Religion 261
Pilgrimage 264
Big Questions and the Transcendence of Ego 267
Mythology and the Origins of Fear 270
Materialism and the Spiritual or What Kind of Knowledge Are We Pursuing?
Keeping on Keeping on 275
Why Samsung? A Tale of Two Cathedrals, a Final Metalogue 280
Epilogue: So What? 287
Bibliography 290
Index 312

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.9.2018
• Zusatzinfo: XVII, 323 p. 5 illus.
• Verlagsort: Cham
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Erwachsenenbildung
• Schlagworte: adult learning • Imagination • Learning and Instruction • Lifelong Learning • Psychosocial Studies • Transformation • Transformative learning
• ISBN-10: 3-319-96388-0 / 3319963880
• ISBN-13: 978-3-319-96388-4 / 9783319963884