The Network Interrogating Transformative Processes in Learning
Hellenic Adult Education Association contributed to the creation of the ITLP Network a few years ago.
We hosted the first two Conferences of the Network in 2014 and 2016. In each conference we had more than 150 participants.
The next Conference will be held in Milan. For further details see https://sites.google.com/view/itlp2018conference.
Aim of the Network & Conveners
The aim of the network is to create space for enhancing international dialogue and research on transformative processes in learning, including notions of Transformative Learning (TL), and what this means and how it might best be facilitated. There is anxiety about the widespread use of the term‚ transformative‘ and the danger of it being emptied of meaning, reduced, perhaps, to little more than a marketing slogan. There is continuing debate about the nature and significance of concepts of TL – and of what forms transform? as Robert Kegan famously framed it – as there is, more widely, about processes of adult learning of any significant kind. The debate includes the extent to which change processes are to be conceptualized as more than epistemic shifts, however profound, but are also deeply embodied, and or culturally embedded, as well as emotional, relational and even psychic in nature. There is dialogue too about the social as against the psychological dimensions of TL, with concern, perhaps, about the tendency to overly individualize/psychologise important transformative change processes. There may be more of a European emphasis here, if not exclusively so, in which historic traditions of radical popular education, for instance, were rooted in ideas of collective struggle and social transformation. There is also a rich international literature on the importance of cultivating critical self knowledge in transformative processes as well as psychoanalytically informed insights into the workings of unconscious processes in relationship to change and the capacity to think, in radically different ways, as well as resistance to these. The unconscious can be seen to function at the collective as well as individual level. Others may be anxious about confusing the practices of adult education and psychotherapy, seeing these as distinct and different domains.
In the new Network, we bring together diverse researchers/scholars from different countries to dialogue and explore transformative processes/TL, in theory and practice, philosophically, psychosocially, pedagogically and through the lens of different forms of research, theoretical lenses and disciplinary/interdisciplinary frames. We intend to cultivate a genuinely international dialogue involving new and experienced colleagues from all over Europe, and around the globe, to address such questions and to contribute to wider debate about the nature, purpose and possibilities of adult education in challenging times. There are many indications of support for the network: the Transformative Learning Conference of 2011 took place in Europe (Athens) for the first time, with 275 European participants. The sponsors of this initiative come from different parts of Europe. Provisional work programme: A first launch and planning meeting took place in Freiburg, 22nd of June. Members of the network will presented a symposium and gave other papers addressing key issues at the ESREA triennial conference in Berlin, from the 4th to the 7 th September 2013.
If you are interested in the Network and want to find out more, see http://esrea-interrogating-tl-processes.com/
We will place you on our mailing list and inform you of all future events: please do make contact with us.
Name of convener(s) of the Network:
Prof. Michel Alhadeff-Jones, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA; Sunkhronos Institute, Switzerland
Prof. Alexis Kokkos, Hellenic Open University, Greece- Chairman of Hellenic Adult Education Association
Anna Laros, University for Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland
Prof. Linden West, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK