This presentation was given by Halina Ostankowicz- Bazan who is a senior University Lecturer from the University of Wroclaw in southern Poland.
She started by telling us that she was going to focus on the Transformative Culture of Learning and started off by showing us the following video.
Halina then gave us the definitions of learning from different points of view and then showed us the following slide which highlights when learning has happened.
I would certainly like to do something with all the knowledge I have gained this month.
Halina told us that there are three dimensions to transformative learning, they are psychological, behavioural and convictional. (psychological is the change in understanding, behavioural is the change in people's actions and convictional is the change in people's beliefs.) All of these ideas were proposed by Mezirow. The latest definition of transformative learning is from 2014 Knud Illeris and reads as follows- "The concept of transformative learning comprises all learning which implies changes in the identity of the learner."
She then went on to look at the differences between transactional learning and transformative learning. Transactional learning is the old idea of learning, that the student is an empty vessel which needs to be filled (sometimes called passive learning), whereas transformative learning is the expansion of consciousness by accessing and receiving the symbolic contents of the unconcious and critically analysing the underlying premise. Unlike transactional learning it is active learning.
Halina presented this slide from John Wenger to show us what this means in the real world
She explained that the research does not have much explanation of transactional learning but many learning experts say that self-directed self-controlled learning is most useful. The teacher's job is to provide dilemma for the students to experiment with and find solutions. She then showed us part of the 10 strategies provided by Mezirow and the technologies that can support these strategies. (Click to see full size picture!)
https://sites.google.com/site/transformativelearning/technology-impacts-in-transformative-learning-practices
But she did, like other presenters, point out that the technology is not the driver, just a means of reaching the objective and if it is not the best means then we should look again as to whether another tool can do the job in a better way.
She then went on to talk about a learning culture and highlighted that every human being has an inbuilt learning culture.
She said that a personal culture includes everything a person finds meaningful and is developed through social interaction with family and others in your environment. Teachers need to create a trust between themselves and students in order to facilitate learning.
She said that human beings are wired for learning and there was a link to a talk by Alan November of this topic - Alan November, I notice that there are some other parts on the playlist which may be worth looking at later. She also gave us a few books that she highly recommends on the subject. The slide seemed to flash past very quickly so I captured it and publish it below.
The latest problem is that terminology is changing and they are looking for new ways to describe things.
She also said that the Polish education system is not designed for the new world, it is set in the past. i do not teach in the school system but from what I see of students here, this seems a reasonable assessment but it may be changing slowly. Halina does what the school dictates and then she has fun using different resources and methods. She recommended the 'Handbook of Transformative Learning by Taylor and Cranton. Then she gave us some comments about transformative learning.
She then went on to talk about mindset, which I have come across several times now. Open mindsets are to be encouraged, She touched on blended learning and flipped classrooms. She then gave us this quote
“We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”
― Marcel Proust
which seems to sum up the best of tranformational learning.
Even though I found this session quite heavy going for some reason, I did find it very interesting with lots of good, relevant information and pointers for further investigation. Thank you very much Halina. I will leave this review with a picture about mindset that one of the participants linked to in the chatbox about.
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