Stories of Transformative Learning (International Issues in Adult Education)

Stories of Transformative Learning is intended to encourage people to explore the potential for transformative learning in their lives, practices, and communities. This book illustrates the transformative learning process through ten stories of individuals from both inside and outside of the classroom. Adult educators and adult learners will find the book to be personally insightful and professionally useful.

There have been many accounts of transformative learning experiences, but it is not often that we have the opportunity to hear first-hand personal stories of transformative learning. Here, ten stories are told directly by the people who experienced them, with additional commentary from the authors. These stories are intended to resonate with readers and to inspire people to create the conditions where transformative learning can occur in their lives and professional practice.

Storytelling is one way in which both educators and learners can understand the process of transformative learning. Telling stories, reading others’stories, and contemplating our own stories all help us to become aware of alternative perspectives, a process that is at the heart of critical reflection and critical self-reflection, which is, in turn, central to transformative learning.

We hope to increase readers’sense of agency and more self-directed, self-fulfilling lives. By demonstrating how others have examined and reconsidered otherwise hidden assumptions that constrained the quality and potential of their lives, we show readers how they may do the same.

MICHAEL KROTH is Assistant Professor in the Department of Adult and Organizational Learning at the University of Idaho. As a long-time consultant he has provided corporate-level ledaership development and succession planning programs, been the administrator of a corporate foundation, and served as a director of corporate community affairs. He is the Leadership Field Editor for the American Society for Training and Development's In-Practice on-line newsletter, is a past member of the ASTD International Program Advisory Committee, and a member of the National Speakers Association, presenting regularly at national and international conferences. He is co-author, with Patricia Boverie, of Transforming Work: The Five Keys to Achieving Trust, Commitment, and Passion in the Workplace.

Patricia Cranton is currently affiliated with the University of New Brunswick in Canada and Teachers College, Columbia University in the United States. She has held positions at McGill University, Brock University, University of New Brunswick, St. Francis Xavier University, and Penn State University. Patricia has been teaching courses in transformative learning for 20 years, and has written or edited several books, including "The Handbook of Transformative Learning: Theory, Research and Practice" (co-edited with Ed Taylor, 2012). In 2014, she was inducted into the International Hall of Fame for Adult and Continuing Education. In 2016, Patricia Cranton was a recipient of the Order of Canada.