~~~
Transformative Learning
by Jonathan Haber

Transformative learning modalities may be the link in our educational system that facilitates a large scale shift in consciousness - that supports the birth of a sustainable civilization.

Does transformative learning have something to offer that serves as a link in the chain of the Great Turning?

In my studies at CIIS (the California Institute of Integral Studies), the first assignment we had was on understanding transformative learning as a platform for study vs. what is known as banked learning. Conventionally, banked learning comes from when individuals are given "knowledge" that is socially accepted as truth, asked to memorize it, and the recall the information on tests, while transformative learning facilitates the illumination of knowledge from within, through ones personal experience.

Many scholars believe that we each have a "map of the world" - which acts as a framework within which we integrate new concepts. Its our personal guide to understanding new things. When concepts or experiences fit into our map of the world - we tend to adopt them more easily, whereas if they don't, we either disregard them or begin to question the way we see things.

In banked learning, new knowledge comes from outside of someone. This may lead to the same cultural and societal norms, including our mistakes and overlookings, to be reproduced. Some scholars believe this is one reason why conventional education is producing what we see today, from oceans on the brink of systemic collapse to trees falling at a potentially irreversible rate.

In transformative learning, new knowledge comes from within. We are asked to reflect on our experiences, to cultivate our awareness, and to see things through different lenses. Our map of the world becomes one possible lens, and each lens is valued as having something to offer. To facilitate transformative learning, the teacher invokes an experience that is designed to illicit ones individual wisdom, especially by creating situations that might challenge ones map of the world. Through practices such as conscious embodiment, integrative movement, spontaneous expression, meditation, yoga, invocation of states of consciousness, invocation of archetypal expressions, utilization of symbology, mythology, and the facilitation of shifts in consciousness - individual awareness is deepened, and access to ones internal wisdom is illuminated.

Through reflection on these experiences they are integrated, individuals are allowed to access the properties of themselves as living systems, evolving, adapting, growing.

So what might a facilitator evoke in the desire to spark transformative learning opportunities?
How can these qualities be evoked?
How can we use transformative learning frameworks to illuminate knowledge that might be intimatly related to sustainability? To the emergence of a sustainable civilization?

I give thanks for the insight that Joanna Macy has cultivated in these areas through her work with Engaged Buddhism. And I invite you to join me in exploring them.

How can we become aware of the emergence of a sustainable civilization?

Many modern day scholars and teachers would say that we are a blind civilization headed for its own destruction. Why?
Why would we, as a society, create a system that is inherently self-consumptive?
What spell could we have fallen under that we would not adapt to the needs of the planet?


If we are interconnected with the natural world...
why is it so difficult for many of us to experience this phenomena?
how can we invite experiences that facilitate this?
what will this mean to us as a people?


I invite you now to read some of my favorite poems that offer reflection on these questions...
Poetic Reflections