Learning Toward an Ecological Consciousness: Selected Transformative Practices

Transformative learning involves experiencing a deep, structural shift in the basic premises of thought, feelings, and actions. It is a shift of consciousness that dramatically and permanently alters our way of being in the world. Such a shift involves our understanding of ourselves and our self-locations; our relationships with other humans and with the natural world; our understanding of relations of power in interlocking structures of class, race and gender; our body awarenesses; our visions of alternative approaches to living; and our sense of possibilities for social justice and peace and personal joy. The editors of this collection make several challenges to the existing field of transformative learning - the first is to theoreticians, who have attempted to describe the nature of transformative learning without regard to the content of transformative learning. The editors argue that transformative learning theory cannot be constructed in a content-neutral or context-free way. Their second challenge, which assumes the importance content for transformative learning, is to educators as practitioners. The editors argue that transformative learning requires new educational practices consistent with the content. Arts-based research and arts-based teaching/learning practices are one example of such new educational practices. Education for the soul, or spiritual practices such as meditation or modified martial arts or indigenous peoples' forms of teaching/learning, is another example. Each article in the collection presents a possible model of these new practices.

Table of Contents:
Introduction * Glimpses of an Ecological Consciousness - Edmund V. O'Sullivan and Marilyn M. Taylor * Educational Ecologies and Embodied Knowledge * Transformative Learning for Bioregional Citizenship - Laurent A. Parks Daloz * Learning Ecology: Experiences from Social Ecology in Australia - Stuart Hill, Steve Wilson and Kevin Watson * Leadership Education in a Socio-Ecological Perspective: Working at the Paradigmatic Interface - Don W. deGuerre and Marilyn M. Taylor * The Ecology of Learning and Work: Learning for Transformative Work Practices - Marilyn Laiken * Learning through Engagement in the Life World * A Pueblo Story for Transformation - Gregory Cajete * Midwifing Transformative Change * Nurturing the Internal Flame: How Environmentalist Sustain their Commitment to Work - Jessica Kovan and John Dirkx * A Transformation Model for Passion in the Workplace - Patricia Boverie and Michael Kroth * The Dynamic Relation of Personal Agency in Community Context * Personal and Social Transformation: A Complementary Process toward an Ecological Consciousness - Yuka Hashimoto * Holding Flames: Women Illuminating Knowledge of s/Self Transformation - Eimear O'Neill * From Intersubjective Therapy to Esprit Networking: Mapping a Social Process - Barbara Dewar and Sandra Campbell * Fostering Ways-of-Giving within Communities - Valerie Petrie * Transformative Rungs on Wisdom's Ladder - Merriam Bleyl and Patricia Boverie