Health professionals often experience industry-specific stressors that contribute to reduced worker well-being, compromised care, and worker resignation. Research shows that self-care practices of mindfulness and self-compassion may lessen the impact of these stressors and contribute to greater well-being for self and others. This paper explores the processes and feasibility of a pilot study aimed at self-care capacity building among students enrolled in undergraduate health professions degree programs. Practices from transformative learning pedagogy such as critical reflection, collaborative inquiry, and unitive discourse were carefully utilized in a mindfulness training course to support perspective transformation and meaning-making around self-care. Insights from this study may inform the development of student preparedness efforts in undergraduate programs and encourage the use of mindfulness and transformative learning for capacity building in educative settings.
In this article we explore the heuristic power of the Meditative Process Art (MPA) method, a unique, transpersonal, transformative arts-based method developed for a workshop series with women living with HIV. These workshops formed part of the Positively Women research project, which adopted an exploratory approach to examine the transformative potential of contemplative art for women living with HIV. Examining the design and impacts of the method, we found that its creative-contemplative, social justice, and heuristic foundations supported healing, enhanced participants’ agency and self-awareness, and enabled significant transformation. Further, through our engagement with Susanne Langer’s philosophy of art to explicate the workings of the MPA method, we identified foundational elements of the MPA method’s heuristic power. We present these findings for theorists and practitioners interested in transformative arts-based methods, and for all those working to advance understanding of the lived realities of marginalised individuals and communities.
This duoethnographic study explores the transformative learning journeys of three international faculty at a Midwestern Predominantly White Institution (PWI) in the United States. Grounded in Mezirow’s transformative learning theory, the research analyzed how experiences of cultural adaptation and identity negotiation catalyzed professional and personal transformation. Our findings reveal transformation occurred through interconnected engagement across three academic domains: (1) teaching as a site of critical reflection and pedagogical agency; (2) research as identity work and scholarly agency; and (3) service as a pathway to advocacy and institutional belonging. The duoethnographic process fostered collaborative meaning-making, enabling us to reframe our cultural identities as sources of professional strength. We conclude that international faculty serve as vital agents who co-create transformative learning environments within the institution. The study offers a conceptual framework for understanding this integrative process and provides recommendations for institutional policy and faculty development supporting identity-affirming growth.
This autoethnographic inquiry explores a personal transformation, tracing the author's journey from a career in banking to that of an educational researcher. The narrative centers on a "disorienting dilemma" and the realization that foundational truths, like geometric axioms, are conditional. This rupture challenged deeply ingrained binary thinking, leading to an embodied and existential crisis that extended beyond purely rational reflection. The article, presented in a hybrid form that combines narrative, poetry, and collage, illustrates how this initial disorientation fostered a shift toward embracing complexity, pluralism, and an ongoing, fluid identity. It argues that transformation is a recursive, relational process, extending beyond cognitive shifts to reshape one's being across professional, personal, and spiritual domains.
Emotions influencing learning are often overlooked in engineering education, which emphasizes rationality and technical competence. However, recent studies highlight the impact of emotional experiences on outcomes such as academic achievement, engagement, and persistence, particularly for first-year engineering students facing transitional challenges. This study explores how emotional factors, specifically valence and arousal, affect the early transformative experiences of these students. Drawing on the Circumplex Model of Affect and Transformative Learning Theory, it examines how these affective dimensions intersect with the transformative learning journey. Data were collected through surveys including a validated emotion scale and the Learning Activities Survey (LAS) instrument. Results reveal a strong match between students' affective measures and their transformative learning experience. Findings highlight the need for emotionally intelligent teaching practices to support students' transformative experience, resilience, personal growth, and academic development. Integrating emotionally responsive pedagogical approaches can better prepare students for the complexities of academic and professional engineering environments.
Examining generative AI through the lens of transformative learning theory, this article conceptualizes AI as a potential disorienting dilemma for adult learners and educators. Critiquing AI applications using Mezirow's (Cranton & Taylor, 2012) learning theory, this article shows that generative AI simultaneously short-circuits the kinds of cognitive engagement needed for transformative learning and upsets the learners' most basic assumptions about expertise, intelligence, and learning. This article reworks the logic of transformative learning theory and establishes specific conditions that make AI-mediated learning possible as well as certain conditions in which AI-mediated learning precludes perspective transformation. The article has three theoretical contributions: (1) transformational learning necessitates irreducible personal engagement with premise-level complexity, (2) technological disruption triggers transformational learning only when it upends ontological, as opposed to procedural, assumptions, and (3) AI-mediated learning can only scaffold but not replace critical reflection, situating it as a "sophisticated" disorienting dilemma.
This trio-ethnography, grounded in transformative learning theory and comparative views, explores the academic paths and identity development of three international scholars from the Asian/Asian diaspora community. Transformative learning involves changing interpretations of experiences to influence future actions and critically evaluate perspectives, often sparked by disorienting dilemmas. While existing research emphasizes transformation through crises, this study examines whether such triggers can be positive, future-focused, and deliberately fostered in cross-cultural learning. The findings indicate that transcultural experiences can foster growth, assisting scholars in managing cultural dissonance, reshaping their identities, and gaining agency in academic and personal spheres through intentional transformation. The study compares commonalities and differences in transformative learning experiences and introduces a new perspective that highlights home culture as a vital factor in enabling transformative learning across cultures. These insights enrich the understanding of transformative learning as a dynamic, context-sensitive process, and suggest practical strategies to support current and aspiring international students and scholars.
Transformative learning is often a long and difficult process, during which learners may express many forms of resistance. To investigate such resistance, a 2-year qualitative study was conducted on Finnish teacher education. Field diary notes and students' writings were collected from a group of teacher students (N = 11). The analysis focuses on the whole group and two of its members. Using a phenomenological-hermeneutic methodology and the theories of Ziehe, Illeris, and Agamben, three interpretations of why and how students said no to transformative learning were formulated: regressive no (the need to rest from the process), defensive no (the lack of resources/motivation needed for the process), and emancipatory no (saying yes to something else). The reasons for refusal and withdrawal are based on case examples that do not cover all possible reasons. Thus, future studies should complement these, given the relevance of how resistance is interpreted during transformative learning.
In the context of a significant increase in mental health issues and loneliness in academia, there is an urgent need to reimagine the contribution of academic learning to inner development, psychospiritual growth, and flourishing. Integral transformative pedagogies that engage the whole person (cognitive, emotional, somatic, and spiritual), offer a viable response to these challenges. Through the analysis of a community of practice that involved 15 students, the research shows how such pedagogies can cultivate inner and interpersonal capacities that support flourishing. This study examines the way integral transformative pedagogies cultivate the dimensions of Being (inner) and Relating (interpersonal) capacities in the Inner Development Goals Framework. At the Being level, they had an impact on self-awareness, authenticity, and openness to vulnerability. At the Relating level they significantly deepened interpersonal connection and cultivated the experience of mutual care and kindness, contributing to participants' well-being and flourishing.
This forum piece examines the emotional, relational, and ethical dimensions of transformative learning in contemporary higher education. Drawing on practitioner experience at a research-intensive Canadian university and scholarship in critical pedagogy, adult learning, and institutional ethics, it illustrates how transformative learning is shaped and often constrained by organizational cultures, political pressures, and unfulfilled institutional commitments to inclusion. While transformative learning aspires to disrupt assumptions and cultivate more just ways of knowing, practitioners frequently encounter institutional inertia, value misalignment, and forms of institutional betrayal that complicate this work. These dynamics intensify the affective labour required of staff and faculty, often resulting in moral injury, burnout, and precarious relational work that remains largely invisible. The paper argues for a fuller recognition of the human conditions underpinning transformative learning and calls for institutional courage, relational accountability, and more sustainable structures of support.
This paper explores the media representation of migrants and examines the role of adult education in fostering sociocultural transformation. Drawing on lifelong learning and collective transformative learning frameworks, we argue media narratives often reinforce stereotypes and exclusion but can also serve as entry points for dialogue and education. We highlight the role of that adult education and argue that it can play a pivotal role in reframing migration as a catalyst for social and cultural transformation. These frameworks encourage critical reflection, empathy, and participatory engagement, enabling learners to confront biases and co-construct more inclusive narratives. The paper concludes by offering implications for transformative multicultural education and suggests strategies for fostering intercultural understanding and socially just learning environments in the context of global migration.
This conceptual paper introduces the Transformation-Affirmation-Recognition (TAR) model, a framework that reconceptualizes transformation as a psychosocial process grounded in the dynamic interplay between self-affirmation and social recognition. Drawing on Mezirow's theory of transformative learning, Steele's self-affirmation theory, and Honneth's recognition theory, the paper argues that transformation is sustained not by cognition alone but by the affective and relational forces that enable individuals to remain in contact with difficult emotions such as discomfort. Self-affirmation preserves a sense of integrity when one's meaning structures are disrupted, while recognition validates the emerging self within a social context. Together, these forces form a dialectical movement that allows learners to engage discomfort as a developmental resource rather than as a threat. An illustrative reflection demonstrates how the TAR process operates in practice, revealing how affirmation and recognition jointly enable resilience and growth.
This study explored how university faculty members in Sudan conceptualized teacher leadership and examined the extent to which a leadership development module-delivered through either vignette pedagogy or traditional instruction-prompted shifts in those conceptions. Seventeen faculty members participated in semi-structured interviews before and after the intervention. Thematic analysis revealed that, prior to the module, participants largely viewed teachers as compliant implementers focused on discipline, curriculum coverage, and adherence to policy. Leadership was not associated with the teaching role. Post-intervention, particularly among those exposed to vignette pedagogy, participants began to articulate more expansive conceptions of teacher leadership. Vignettes supported critical reflection, deepened empathy with classroom dilemmas, and provoked reconsideration of teachers as change agents and relational leaders. These shifts suggest that pedagogical modality plays a key role in enabling transformative learning among higher education faculty.
This interpretative phenomenological study explores how five female Chinese immigrants across different adult developmental stages make sense of their cultural identities in the context of acculturation. The participants' developmental stages were assessed using Kegan's constructive-developmental theory, providing a framework to understand their meaning-making capacities. The research pursues two interconnected objectives: First, it contextualizes perspective transformation processes within a stage-based developmental model, examining how individuals combine and synthesize different aspects of their cultural identities into a coherent sense of self. Second, it critically examines how dominant ideologies and power dynamics influence immigrants' cultural identity integration. The findings reveal how critical acculturation experiences offer context that shifted participants' relationships with their heritage and American cultures. Their narratives illuminate Asian immigrants' transformative journeys toward an integrated sense of self, shaped by their developmental capacities and societal power structure.
Grounded in Transformative Learning (TL) theory, this qualitative phenomenological study explores how COVID-19 isolation influenced individuals' capacity for reflective and transformative learning. Through a qualitative phenomenological study, findings show that profound uncertainty and heightened emotions prompted participants to critically reflect on personal, relational, and societal issues. Externally imposed isolation fostered introspection and shifts in assumptions and self-perception, revealing the transformative potential of guided reflection during uncertainty. The study expands TL theory by highlighting how emotions and uncertainty can catalyze meaningful personal and intellectual growth.
This study explores how a short-term study abroad program in South Korea influenced American educators' perceptions of the country's education system, people, and society. Guided by Mezirow's transformative learning theory, data were collected from 64 teachers and school administrators who participated in a 10-day program, using application statements, field notes, reflections, and interviews. Findings revealed that participants initially held limited or negative perceptions of South Korea, but interactions with local educators, families, and cultural contexts prompted critical reflection, leading to more nuanced and empathetic interpretations. Participants also developed a deeper appreciation of Korean cultural values and increased sensitivity toward immigrant students. Although some educators demonstrated perspective transformation consistent with Mezirow's framework, others showed primarily informational learning, gaining new knowledge without reexamining their assumptions. This variation indicates that immersion alone is insufficient for transformative learning and underscores the need for guided reflection and intentional cultural engagement to promote deeper learning.
This study examined the experiences of nine Chinese engineering students who won first prize in a national team-based competition. By analyzing critical incidents, the study investigated how these experiences shaped students' understanding of collaborative problem-solving. The findings show that Guanxi, a cultural phenomenon rooted in Chinese society's collectivist values and practices, influenced the content, focus, and timing of students' reflections. Initially, students participated in the competition without engaging in reflection. As students progressed through different learning loops, the competition experiences improved their reflections on teamwork and problem-solving skills, resulting in a deeper understanding and a shift in perspective regarding their roles in teamwork. This study extends Mezirow's transformative learning theory to a non-Western cultural context, demonstrating how cultural values and practices influence reflection and transformative learning outcomes. The findings support the global applicability of transformative learning theory and provide insights for designing culturally responsive training programs.
Professional identity development is a multifaceted process shaped by a combination of cultural values, social expectations, and personal experiences. While transformative learning and experiential learning methods have been extensively studied, the role of embodied and reflective practices, particularly in cross-cultural settings, remains underexplored. This study examines the transformative processes experienced by the researcher, a Japan-born scholar navigating her professional identity in the United States through an embodied learning approach. By employing an autoethnography-inspired method, the research study investigates how cultural and somatic dimensions intersect to help shape identity and leadership development, offering a deeper understanding of the potential for non-verbal, experiential learning to facilitate professional growth.
