Transforming Perspectives in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education: A Dialogue

330 Pages·2018·4.66 MB·English

by  Laura Formenti

Transforming Perspectives
in Liffellongg Learning andd
Adult Education
A Dialogue
Laura Formenti and Linden West
Transforming Perspectives in Lifelong Learning
and Adult Education
“A beautiful work in which Laura Formenti and Linden West invite us on a
compelling pilgrimage of multiple perspectives of transformative learning.
Rooted in auto/biographical narrative and engaging dialogical methods, the
authors quickly draw us into a journey that takes us off the academic beaten
path by, paradoxically, embracing well-established intellectual traditions, such
as philosophy, art, and spirituality. Together we enter into worlds of light and
height as well as darkness and depth.
Through their masterful representation and use of these traditions, the
authors create for us a subjective journey that increasingly illuminates what it
objectively means to more fully grasp and live the transformative dimensions
of learning and adult education. It is a storied journey in which we weave in
and out of the authors’ lives and experiences, their relationship and dialogue
with one another, the lives of their research participants, and the powerful
ideas that have guided and informed their pilgrimage.
A much welcomed and needed exploration of one of the most generative
concepts in adult learning. After reading this book, you can’t help but think
and feel differently both about transformative learning as a theoretical concept
and yourself as an active participate in this dialogue. It’s a must read!”
—Professor John M. Dirkx, Michigan State University, USA
“This book is an engagement in transformative pilgrimage learning! It takes the
reader on a journey that bridges the perspectives of continents, and keeps the
reader walking and thinking, moving with soul, while connecting imagination
with intellect, body with spirit. It keeps the reader in a constant dialogue or
‘metalogue’ with/between one’s own self and the co-authors, in a ponderous
transformative learning journey exploring the relationship of ideas grounded in
ancient landscapes and European cathedrals as they continue to unfold in the
technological age of electronic billboards and pop culture. Peppered with story,
philosophy, and a sense of humor, it explores the fact that in spite of the ‘pil-
grim’s progress’ of technology, the best of the transformative pilgrimage learn-
ing journey is in our capacity as story tellers, wisdom seekers, who create art
and meaning by embracing the paradox of life in the midst of death, wisdom
in the midst of foolishness. It is a must read for adult educators and lifelong
learners interested in the transformative power of pilgrimage learning.”
—Professor Elizabeth J. Tisdell, Penn State University, USA
Laura Formenti · Linden West
Transforming
Perspectives in
Lifelong Learning
and Adult Education
A Dialogue
Laura Formenti Linden West
“Riccardo Massa” Department of Human School of Childhood and Educational
Sciences for Education Sciences
Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca Canterbury Christ Church University
Milan, Italy Canterbury, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-96387-7 ISBN 978-3-319-96388-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96388-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949312
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein
or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover image: © Tetra Images/Getty
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For all our friends—in Europe and a wider world—in the community of
scholars called the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults
(ESREA), Life History and Biographical Research Network. They have
contributed greatly to our understanding of self, our lives, learning and the
hope we call education.
Preface
This book will make a traveller of thee, if by its counsel thou wilt ruled be…
John Bunyan, (1678). The Pilgrim’s Progress. Penguin Classics, 1963: p. 4.
And yet, today as yesterday, and hopefully as tomorrow, unceasingly on
the brink of catastrophe, humanity keeps being held together by this very
same, almost invisible, thin thread: «know thyself», so that the sun may
keep rising. Daniela Boccassini (2017), On the Wings of the Night: Jung,
Dante and Individuation.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better…
Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse
again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Samuel Beckett (1983/2009).
Worstward Ho, In Company etc. Dirk Van Dyke (Ed). London: Faber
and Faber, p. 81.
The quotations from Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Daniela Boccassini
and Samuel Beckett express some of the spirit underlying our book on
transformation, transformative learning and adult education. The met-
aphor shaping the text is of pilgrimage; we have dialogued together, as
well as with diverse others, when walking our way through different
theories and perspectives on learning, formation and transformation.
vii
viii Preface
We sought to interrogate the role of adult education in a world that
often seems ‘on the brink of catastrophe’ and to see if the human
capacity for learning—including our own—is still of value in holding
humanity together.
Bunyan and Dante wrote of journeys into infernal and purgatorial
landscapes, where eventually people can find their way to some earthly
paradise or Celestial City. We might label such perspectives, in contem-
porary terms, psychological or spiritual narratives of transformation
that illuminate how difficult journeys can be. The two authors’ writing
suggests deeper, more demanding processes that tend to be the case in
contemporary discussion of lifelong learning or transformative adult
education. They are marketed as the means for updating our skills in
a highly competitive world; as a passport, perhaps, to relative mate-
rial abundance, social status and ‘success’ defined by reference to get-
ting a degree, alongside a new BMW or smartphone. Or to individual
achievement and understanding but at the neglect of collective well-
being and the environment. The question is then begged as to what
learning and education are actually for?
The literature of learning and education also privileges cognition in
any shifts of self or collective understanding. Mind matters most as the
learner makes informed and reflective decisions to act on her insights,
and to transcend situational, emotional and intellectual constraints.
Transformative learning, in this perspective, is about our intellects
exposing social and cultural embeddedness and oppression and taken
for granted assumptions. While we think our intellects are important,
transformation, we suggest, involves deeper, whole body, heartfelt as
well as spiritual work: knowing ourselves better might include finding
the courage to engage with and learn from the other and otherness,
not least in ourselves. Pilgrimage conveys, we suggest, something of
the spirit required for such learning: it is about taking time, time out
and an openness to varied experience as well as allowing a journey to
unfold. We find landmarks on the way, meaningful as well as challeng-
ing, and will meet other pilgrims and perspectives. We can realise there
is much to learn from different cultures in a kind of nomadic existence.
We have met various pilgrims in writing this book, people similar and
also different from us, who struggle with big questions about being
Preface ix
human and the well-lived life, in a world of fragility, greed, violence
and paranoia. Much like, in fact, Dante’s fourteenth century Florence
or Bunyan’s seventeenth century England; or for that matter Beckett’s
twentieth century Europe. The pilgrims include educators who have
sought answers and transformation in collective struggle as well as in
personal journeys of individuation and psychological integration. In all
such work, projections about the evil other can be returned to where
they belong, in our own psyches or cultures, which then enables us to
relate better to others and otherness in the entirety of our lives. Or at
least, there is the possibility of doing so.
We seem to be living in a world teetering on the brink of catastrophe.
Teetering or struggling for balance can constitute the human condition,
across time and cultures. But Bunyan and Dante encourage us on our
journeys. Our book, at the risk of pretentiousness, has a similar aim:
to invite you, our reader, into dialogue, to share struggles, occasional
despair, doubt, even failure, alongside moments of beauty, joy and
truth; and to cultivate the determination to keep on keeping on. Our
dialogue is part of a quest to illuminate the prerequisites for self-knowl-
edge, as Jung would have understood it; and to reconnect this with his-
torical values in adult education in struggles for transformational social
change. This at a moment where conversation and civility in public life
often get drowned out by the beating drums of fascism and xenopho-
bia, or in calls to violence and in the hate discourse of social media.
Denigration of the other and trivialisation of complexity seem virulent.
Adult education, in many countries, including our own—Britain and
Italy—once represented a more hopeful public space where conver-
sation, dialogue and conviviality were nurtured, even across profound
difference. But adult education of a liberal and popular kind has weak-
ened while the idea of public space—what the ancient Greeks called the
agora—is shrunk in a privatised world.
One problem with transformative learning or adult education, to par-
aphrase Oscar Wilde, is that they can require too many evening meet-
ings. Too much effort, commitment, and too much of our time. There
is pessimism stalking our book alongside a spirit of keeping on keeping
on. Some question the quality of much so-called education in a liquid
world where all that is solid melts away, and the basic preconditions
x Preface
for self-formation are fragile. The sociologist Zigmunt Bauman writes
of the human need for stable families and communities and for forms
of education offering disciplined access to worthwhile knowledge, accu-
mulated and tested over time. This is an education taking time: to pre-
pare, digest, savour, enjoy, challenge and which, in turn, challenges us
to the core. But in liquid modernity the menu often consists of junk
food or short-term projects, under the banner of lifelong learning and
even higher education. We are encouraged to be flexible in this culture
of freneticism and struggle for survival. We are like hunters, in harsh
terrain, desperate for the next kill (a new job, a degree or partner),
and the bliss this promises; but the feeling does not last, and the fear
of going without, or of being excluded and second best, continually
drives us on. Some give up the hunt altogether, and escape into forms
of addiction, consumerism, or maybe Facebook. Therein lies danger, as
our Facebook data are mined and our demons manipulated by the new
digital behemoths.
Bauman is not alone in his pessimism: Sigmund Freud was also
pessimistic about the human condition. He wrote of our resistance to
self-knowledge. Facing the unconscious, as he saw it, was a difficult
business, while closing our eyes to our capacity for violence and even
barbarity was seductive. To be fair both to Freud and Bauman, they,
like many others, encourage us and offer insights, often precious and
profound, to help us on our way. There are many committed men
and women who have dreamt of a better world or thought about the
meaning of the well-lived life. Their voices need to be heard: they talk
of adult education as a microcosm of a better social order; or of soul
work; yet others of aesthetics, and why experiencing beauty or truth,
however fleeting and contentious, is crucial to the good pilgrim-
age. There are writers like Gregory Bateson who enable us to see the
big ecological picture, of which we are only a part. When we pollute
Lake Eerie, he suggested, our psyches and souls are polluted too. We
end our book by reference to the spiritual, even transcendental aspects
of transformative learning. We dialogue with a sister pilgrim, from the
world of adult education, and explore how heaven and hell might lie
within, rather than being up there or down below. Transcendence is
possible in the good adult education group, in a spirit of democratic,