(Part III) Transformative Learning- Changing the Educational Paradigm- What does it mean to ‘know something’?

 

(Part III) Transformative Learning- Changing the Educational Paradigm

What does it mean to ‘know something’?

This is the third in a series of short articles with a focus on challenging current educational models and paradigms with a view to gathering current research and knowledge to provide a sustainable and transformative approach to education to foster active agents of change for the uncertain future that lays ahead.

If you missed Part I and 2 of this series of articles you can find it on my blog (petedrayton.blogspot.com), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/pete-drayton) or Twitter (@drayton_pete).

Are we ready to make a collective, conscious decision as a species and as a society?

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n the previous two articles I discussed different Levels of Knowing (Sterling, 2003), the Four Levels of Knowing (Harding, 2023) and their application in developing a transformative approach to teaching and learning, curriculum, policy and educational institutions themselves. I set the theoretical context for transformative learning and outlined why it is a much-debated concept and a progressive approach to education for sustainability. For the purposes of this article, I will delineate further on how to affect and target learning at a metacognitive level, focusing on challenging beliefs and worldviews, paradigms and beliefs in order to actualize change, agency and advocacy in a collectivized effort towards a sustainable future.

First, Second and Third Order Learning

To set the context for how learning can access and affect deep, more meaningful areas of knowing, it would be helpful to introduce the concept of learning into three parts, first-order learning and second-order learning. First-order learning requires the individual to do more of the same, continue with the status-quo, that is to say an education which affects a change within certain parameters (curriculum areas, subject content, development of knowledge and facts) but, most importantly, without examining, critically engaging or effecting change within one’s assumptions of the boundaries that inform and influence what you are learning, how you are behaving or what you are thinking (Sterling, 2011).  However, second-order learning, refers to a much deeper form of learning, a style of learning which encourages and equips learners with the skills in creating a significant change in understanding and thinking, or in your thoughts or actions as a consequence of critically thinking with one’s beliefs and values. It is therefore clear that to enact a change to individuals’ paradigms and worldviews we need an education that is at the very least grounded in, and concerned with, second-order learning, not just the regurgitation of facts and information. There are clear links between transformative learning and its ability to afford learners the capability and experience in deeper levels of knowing and thinking, this is exactly what is required to access second-order learning. Second-order learning involves challenging the assumptions that underlie first order learning, in other words thinking about our thinking (metacognition), critically engaging with what, how and where we are being taught and its purpose, is it aligned with values that are grounded in sustainability and environmentalism? I would argue that the current education model, particularly in the western world, is not!

However, to only focus on second-order learning alone is not enough to ultimately change worldviews, which are grounded at a much deeper level of knowing.

Third-Order Learning and a Nested Model of Learning

Third-order learning requires the learner/individual to be able to experience seeing their worldview as opposed to seeing ‘with or through’ their worldview. To this end, learning within a paradigm does not change the paradigm, the learning needs to happen outside of it, not through it. This requires educational institutions, educators and policymakers to offer experiential modes of learning that facilitate a fundamental recognition of paradigms and worldviews that enable reconstruction. It is concerned with the broadening of one’s consciousness and a greater, systemic view of thinking, in-turn allowing individuals to be more ecologically minded, which can provide the inspiration and inertia for a different set of values and beliefs to develop (Sterling, 2011).

But how can we develop a learning experience, curriculum and educational institutions which are able to really get to the depth of things, that are able to access this second and third order learning? How can we develop third-order learning, which in turn can lead to changes in both second and first-order learning?

By using the nested model of learning below, we can clearly see how third-order learning can cause changes in both second and first order-learning but how the inverse of this is not possible. Consider your own educational setting or the education you received, which form of learning do you feel it was most concerned with? Which area of learning do the current tests sat by children all over the world retrieve understanding from?

Reference List

Fear, F., Rosaen, C., Bawden, R. & Foster-Fishman, P. (2006) Coming to Critical Engagement. Maryland: University Press of America, Lanham.

Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Mezirow, J. (1978) Perspective transformation, Adult Education, vol.28, no.2, pp.100-110.

Mezirow, J. (2000) Learning as Transformation: critical perspectives on a theory in progress. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Sterling, S. & Baines, J. (2002) A Review of Learning at Schumacher College, Dorchester: Bureau for Environmental Education and Training, unpublished report to Schumacher College.

Sterling, S. (2003) Whole Systems Thinking as a Basis for Paradigm Change in Education: explorations in the context of sustainability (PhD thesis). Bath: Centre for Research in Education and the Environment, University of Bath.

Sterling, S. (2011) Transformative Learning and Sustainability: sketching the conceptual ground. University of Plymouth. Journal for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Issue 5, 2010-11.