Adult learning theories: a review

Transformative Learning Theory in the Practice of Adult Education:

One of the most powerful tools that have developed in the adult education field in understanding how adults learn is transformative learning. This aspect has attracted both researchers and practitioners from various theoretical persuasions and practice settings. Nonetheless, transformative learning is a complicated concept that provides significant hypothetical, practical, and moral challenges. According to an individual's theoretical perspective, the meaning of transformative learning and how it's effectively promoted within formal learning settings differs considerably. Educators of transformative learning are not necessarily involved in teaching content that is considerably different from increased instrumentally-oriented educators.

Since adult education is geared towards promoting critical consciousness among people and groups, the learning process helps adults to cultivate an increased understanding of the means with which social structures impact their beliefs and thoughts about themselves and the world. Therefore, the process is made up of action and reflection that are in dialectical or transactional relationship with one another (Dirkx, 1998). Consequently, education should promote freedom among learners through providing ways for these people to not only reflect on the world but also change it. As transformative learning enables adults to name the world and develop personal meaning of it, it's liberating at the individual and social level.

In consideration of adult learning as likely transformative, the process promotes the establishment and integration of learning content and processes within the lives of people involved in an educative capacity and social-cultural context where lives are rooted. As transformational learning is eternal, adult learning can be considered as transformational.

Reflection:

In explaining how adult learning is transformational, the author has divided the paper into various sections beginning with a discussion of what transformative learning is. The main sections are transformation as consciousness-raising, transformation as critical reflection, transformation as development, transformation as individuation, and the process toward a transformative pedagogy. He attempts to show that this concept has emerged and is slowly developing in adult education to an extent that it has attracted both researchers and practitioners in the field. Actually, the author's main goal is to provide better understanding of the complexity of transformative learning through summarizing its main theoretical views in the field of adult learning.

Generally, there are several adult learning theories that basically provide insights and framework for understanding the difference in learning between adults and younger learners (Trotter, 2006). Some of these theories include Functional Theory, Age and Stage Theory, and Cognitive Development Theory. An examination of Dirkx's article on transformative learning in the field of adult education shows that it's based on the functional theory of adult learning. Functional theory views the experience of the adult learner as critical since if education was life, life could also be considered as education. As a result, authoritative teaching styles, strict pedagogical methodologies, and evaluations that prevent original thinking have no position in adult education and learning.