Venturing Through the Looking Glass: An Instance of Transformative Learning in Adult Education

Adult learners who are introduced to transformative learning in their university education initially tend to find the experience strikingly different from their previous educational programs. For Registered Nurses beginning a baccalaureate degree in nursing, learning in a transformative environment may be as odd to them as was the experience of Lewis Carroll’s Alice on the other side of the Looking Glass. For their teachers, examining a common experience, not common to learners, in an uncommon manner expands the understanding of the process. Using the imaginative work of Lewis Carroll, the authors of this RÉSUMÉ Les apprenants adultes à qui l’on introduit l’apprentissage transformative pendant leur formation universitaire, ont tendance, au début, de trouver l’expérience très différente de leurs programmes pédagogiques précédants. Pour les infirmières autorisées commençant un baccalauréat en sciences infirmières, l’expérience d’un apprentissage fait dans un environnement transformatif, peut leur sembler aussi bizarre qu’était celle d’Alice au Pays des merveilles quand elle s’est retrouvée de l’autre côté du miroir. Pour les enseignants, leur compréhension du processus est élargie lorsqu’ils examinent de Canadian Journal of University Continuing Education Vol. 24, No. 2, Fall pp 11-19 Revue canadienne de l’éducation permanente universitaire Vol. 24, No. 2, Automne 12 • Articles Alice is a young girl in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass who ventures through a looking glass and explores the unusual world behind it. She encounters fascinating characters in a world where the rules are beyond her initial comprehension. The characters challenge her and she responds, first, by using her previous experience and later by questioning and by using her imagination. In this process, she broadens her perspectives and understanding before returning home with new ideas (Carroll, 1946). BEGINNING THE EXPERIENCE: “THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS” The experience of adult learners entering a transformative learning environment to study for a baccalaureate degree parallels the experience of Alice entering an unfamiliar world. Most adult learners have previously experienced a formal, structured approach to learning whereby they learned how to memorize and regurgitate facts, and complete objective tests. However, their accustomed rules for learning do not seem to apply in this new transformative learning environment where interactive strategies predominate and where previous learning skills seem incongruent. paper relate it to the experiences of these adult learners and expound on the strategies being used to facilitate the transformative process in adult education. The perspectives developed by the UNB nursing teachers and the strategies they use to facilitate transformative learning are described. façon unique cette expérience commune qui ne l’est pas pour les apprenants. Les auteurs de ce document utilisent l’oeuvre imaginaire de Lewis Carroll pour y rapprocher les expériences des apprenants adults et pour y expliquer les stratégies utilisées facilitant le processus transformatif en éducation des adultes. Aussi décrivent-elles les perspectives développées par les professeurs de sciences infirmières de l’UN-B ainsi que les stratégies utilisées afin de faciliter l’apprentissage transformatif.