Stances of Transformative Education

Stances of Transformative Education

• Cultural-Spiritual Focus:

  • Focuses on learner knowledge construction (narratives) during transformative learning.
  • Examines the connections between individuals and social structures.

• Cultural-Spiritual Approach:

  • Uses storytelling on personal and social levels through group inquiry.
  • Teachers collaborate with learners emphasizing group inquiry and narrative reasoning.
  • Develops cross-cultural relationships and spiritual awareness in learners.

• Neurobiological Focus:

  • Based on the concept that brain structure changes during learning.
  • Learning is viewed as volitional, curiosity-based, discovery-driven, and mentor-assisted.

• Neurobiological Approach:

  • Learners experience discomfort before discovery.
  • Learning is rooted in individual experiences, needs, and interests.
  • Learning is enhanced by emotive, sensory, and kinesthetic experiences.
  • Restructures individual learners' ways of making meaning in the world.

• Phenomenological Focus:

  • Intellectual, psychological, and moral dimensions of learning to foster personal and social change.

• Phenomenological Approach:

  • Learners prepare to be knowers, doers, and beings for a meaningful life.
  • Develops learner's awareness of their own and others' thoughts, language, and reasoning.
  • Enables learners to strategize their thinking with specific intentions.

• Planetary Focus:

  • Addresses fundamental educational issues holistically.
  • Recognizes interconnectedness among universe, planet, nature, community, and individuals.

• Planetary Approach:

  • Reorganizes political, social, and educational systems for learners.
  • Helps learners understand their perspectives on their human counterparts and the physical world.

• Psychoanalytic Focus:

  • A lifelong process of individuation (understanding oneself).
  • Originates from Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories.

• Psychoanalytic Approach:

  • Individuals understand their identities via reflection on psychic structures.
  • Helps in discovering new talents, empowerment, confidence, and self-understanding.
  • Fosters self-responsibility and a deeper understanding of one's inner self.

• Psychocritical/Cognitive-Rational Focus:

  • Aims for change by developing autonomous thinking in adult learners.
  • Focuses on the individual learner's cognitive and rational processes.

• Psychocritical/Cognitive-Rational Approach:

  • Learners become critically reflective of their assumptions underlying intentions, values, beliefs, and feelings.
  • Learners engage in discourse to critically examine evidence, arguments, and alternate perspectives.
  • Develops autonomous thinking in adults.

• Psychodevelopmental Focus:

  • Leads to epistemological change (meaning-making adjustments).
  • Explores how education helps learners understand their lives.

• Psychodevelopmental Approach:

  • Characterized by intuitive, holistic, and contextually-based learning
  • Mentors guide students' learning journeys based on their social settings.
  • Enables students to transition through developmental stages and evolve during the processes.

• Race-Centric Focus:

  • Primarily focuses on people of African descent, often Black women, within transformative experiences.
  • Highlighting the social-political aspects of learning.

• Race-Centric Approach:

  • Engaging in polyrhythmic realities of lived experience within various sociocultural, political, and historical contexts.
  • Fostering inclusion and empowerment.
  • Improving the ability to negotiate effectively within and across cultures.

• Social-Emancipatory/Consciousness-Raising Focus:

  • Aims to foster critical consciousness in learners.
  • Promotes political liberation and freedom from social oppression.
  • Learners to critically analyze and take action on social, political, cultural, and economic issues that impact their life.

• Social-Emancipatory/Consciousness-Raising Approach:

  • Learners engage in praxis (action-reflection) interactions that promote dialogue and problem-solving.
  • Develops awareness of social structures contributing to inequality and oppression.
  • Learners gain freedom by reflecting on and transforming their world.