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This book presents successful programs, techniques, and strategies for helping adult learners tap into their rich and diverse life experiences as a basis for growth and lifelong learning.
The leading authorities in the field produced this comprehensive resource, which provides strategies and methods for fostering Transformative Learning (TL) practice in a wide variety of higher and adult education settings. The book answers relevant questions such as: What are effective practices for promoting TL in the classroom? What is it about TL that is most helpful in informing practice? How does the teaching setting shape the practice of TL? What are the successes, strengths, and outcomes of fostering TL? What are the risks and challenges when practicing TL in the classroom?
"Provocative and illuminating, this book is a must read for adult educators seeking to understand and facilitate transformational learning. It showcases a stellar group of authors who not only engage each other and the reader in constructive discourse, but who also model the heart of the transformational learning process." --Sharan B. Merriam, Department of Adult Education, University of Georgia This volume continues the landmark work begun by Jack Mezirow over twenty years ago--revealing the impact of transformative learning on the theory and practice of adult education. Top scholars and practitioners review the core principles of transformation theory, analyze the process of transformative learning, describe different types of learning and learners, suggest key conditions for socially responsible learning, explore group and organizational learning, and present revelations from the latest research. They also share real-world examples drawn from their own experiences and assess the evolution of transformative learning in practice and philosophy. Learning as Transformation presents an intimate portrait of a powerful learning concept and invites educators, researchers, and scholars to consider the implications of transformative learning in their own professional work.
The Virtual Student is an essential resource for online educators working with students in higher education and training settings. The authors offer an overview of the key issues of student online learning and provide a practical guide to working with online students. The book covers a broad range of topics including learning styles, multicultural issues, evaluation, retention, and the challenging problems of plagiarism and cheating.
Overwhelmingly, critical practitioners working across a range of human service fields, who are committed to emancipatory and progressive social change ideals, report feeling powerless, alienated from the means of change, and hopeless about their capacities to make a difference in the lives of the individuals, groups or communities with whom they work because of restrictive contexts that ultimately determine the nature and parameters of their work. This ground-breaking book addresses this dilemma by demonstrating how critical reflection as an educational tool enables practitioners to envision possibilities for change. The legal system, particularly in its response to sexual assault provides a perfect example of this type of context and this volume explores the work of sexual assault practitioners that are engaged in supporting victims/survivors of sexual assault through the legal process. By reshaping ideas that have previously been considered as predominantly theoretical and abstract, Morley’s work provides an innovative framework that enables social work and human services practitioners to find hope, agency and practical strategies to work towards change, despite operating in contexts that appear immutably oppressive.
Introduction to Critical Reflection and Action for Teacher Researchers provides crucial direction for educators looking to improve their teaching and maximise learning. While many students can grasp the basic elements of researching their practice and can write about practitioner research, some need guidance and assistance to reflect meaningfully on their teaching practice so as to articulate their educational values. This book provides this guidance. By exploring how to engage in an authentic, practical and personalised framework, the book encourages critical reflection and action on educational practice. Moving through the process of reflecting on practice, engaging in critical thinking and planning and taking action, it helps the reader to subsequently generate educational theory from their own personal learning. Examples from the authors’ experiences illustrate the issues raised in each section, with ‘Pause and Reflect’ activities, guidelines for conducting a research project and annotated further reading available for every chapter. Introduction to Critical Reflection and Action for Teacher Researchers is based on the idea that reflection is in itself a deliberate action and something we must live - it is key to understanding our practice and is a core component of action research. This book is a valuable guide for teachers, trainee teachers and researchers interested in reflecting on and enhancing their teaching practice.
This book provides an accessible overview of the influential Fook/Gardner Critical Reflection framework for students, researchers and professionals. It then presents a wide range of illustrative case studies from a variety of different health and social care settings, demonstrating how it can be used in effective and innovative practice around the world.
The ideas presented in this book are drawn from a study of highly successful principals of schools affiliated with the League of Professional Schools. Chapter 1, "Sharing Governance," presents an overview of the literature on professional development and a description of the study. Chapter 2, "Trusting the Experts: Teachers," focuses on trust as the foundation for shared governance and teacher empowerment. Chapter 3, "Creating Instruction-Oriented Structures That Help Teachers Do Their Best," examines the importance of structuring schools to encourage teacher collaboration and access to decision making. Chapter 4, "A Cornucopia of Supportive Resources," explores how principals use resources such as staff development to enhance teachers' instructional capabilities. Chapter 5,"Encouraging Autonomy and Innovation," reviews extending autonomy and encouraging innovation as strategies to enhance instructional capabilities. Chapter 6, "Modeling Personal Dimensions," highlights the effects of such personal characteristics of principals as optimism, caring, honesty, friendliness, and enthusiasm. Chapter 7, "About Risk and Threat," argues for reducing risk and threat to teachers. Chapter 8, "Valuing and Rewarding Good Work," explains the benefits of rewarding teachers. Chapter 9, "Helping Solve Problems," discusses the importance of adopting a problem-solving orientation. Chapter 10, "Providing Leadership That Is Facilitative and Democratic," presents a portrait of a successful shared-governance principal and considers the future of instruction-oriented, facilitative-democratic leadership in schools. (Contains approximately 300 references.) (TEJ)
This book explores the concept and facilitation of critical reflection and its implications for professional practice. It draws on the author’s own extensive experience to demonstrate how reflective processes involving metaphor and imagery, as well as critique, can be used not only to understand and articulate key values underpinning professional practice and to generate new theoretical models, but to explore one's own worldview, including the ultimate question: 'Who am I?’. The author incorporates practical examples of reflection-through-writing and other reflective techniques which illustrate how ideas about critical reflection, transformative learning, authenticity and spirituality are intricately entwined within theories and practices of adult learning and professional development. The book highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between personal worldviews, values and professional practice. It draws on the concepts of vocation and professional psychological wellbeing to consider what it means to act authentically as a professional within an audit culture. The book will be invaluable for practitioners, academics and students interested in critical reflection, educational inquiry, autoethnography and the use of the self in and as research, the nature and use of metaphor, and the development of worldviews.
"... the book makes an excellent contributionto the library of those keen to delve further intothe realm of critical reflection, understand variousinterpretations of interdisciplinary practices, anduse these to aid their own and others’ professionalpractice, exploration and development." Learning in Health and Social Care How can professionals reflect critically on the aspects of their work they take for granted? How can professionals practise with creativity, intelligence and compassion? What current methods and frameworks are available to assist professionals to reflect critically on their practice? The use of critical reflection in professional practice is becoming increasingly popular across the health professions as a way of ensuring ongoing scrutiny and improved concrete practice - skills transferable across a variety of settings in the health, social care and social work fields. This book showcases current work within the field of critical reflection throughout the world and across disciplines in health and social care as well as analyzing the literature in the field. Critical Reflection in Health and Social Carereflects the transformative potential of critical reflection and provides practitioners, students, educators and researchers with the key concepts and methods necessary to improve practice through effective critical reflection. Contributors:Gurid Aga Askeland, Andy Bilson, Fran Crawford, Jan Fook, Lynn Froggett , Sue Frost, Fiona Gardner, Jennifer Lehmann, Marceline Naudi, Bairbre Redmond, Gerhard Reimann, Colin Stuart, Pauline Sung-Chan, Carolyn Taylor, Susan White, Elizabeth Whitmore, Angelina Yuen-Tsang.
