Transformative Learning and Complexity Science

We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not. Heraclitis …the Dark Philosopher of Ancient Greece Moreover, we step into and out of the river as different beings. Tim Rayner …contemporary change theorist In pondering the human condition, political theorist Hannah Arendt (1958) asserts that all humans are conditioned beings. Yet, the conditions of human existence-life itself, natality and mortality, worldliness, plurality, and the earth-can never 'explain' what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that they never condition us absolutely. (p. 11) 1 Elizabeth A. Lange ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University, Canada. She has 30 years of experience as an educator and facilitator of transformative learning in formal and nonformal settings. Her research focuses on transformative learning, sustainability education for adults, and transcultural learning and immigration. The introductory text The Purposes of Adult Education, 3 rd Edition, 2014, was co-written with Bruce Spencer (Thompson Educational Publishing).

Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton in their book "Getting to Maybe" said that when it comes to social change issues, especially those that imply long term, complex processes, the best we can aspire for is "getting to maybe". Alan Fowler agrees with this when states time frames matter, "the longer something takes, the less predictable the outcome. Longer time frames -from political and social changes, through shifts in social institutions, to inter-generational changes -require a move from relying on certainties in defining desired change to estimating probabilities." I believe most of us think that way. Over the years, most development professionals and organizations that I have exchanged ideas with about social change, agree that social change is a non-linear, long term, and often-unpredictable process requiring efforts at multiple levels. However, most organizations continue to frame their strategies in measurable, cause-effect terms as if their programs can be evaluated in isolation from other efforts, and can demonstrate effectiveness in the short-term. This paradox characterizes the field of communication for social change. As communication involves people, and people are unpredictable, attempts to assess program effects miss their mark when social change is construed as a predictable, linear process.

Abstract
Undergraduate students lack the opportunity and environment to contemplate and develop ecoliteracy skills that serve to integrate subject matter into their everyday experiences. Ecoliteracy is grounded in Capra's web of life theoretical framework and represents students' capacities to read world systems objectively with their head, heart, hands, and spirit. Contemplative pedagogy provides educators with exercises that give students time to reflect on the integration of learning. Ecoliteracy and contemplative pedagogy research has shown little quantitative data pertaining to how contemplative pedagogy affects undergraduate student ecoliteracy. To address that gap, this causal-comparative study measured the use of contemplative pedagogy exercises relative to undergraduate student ecoliteracy. A convenience sample of 150 undergraduate students who did and did not experience contemplative pedagogy exercises completed the New Ecological Paradigm Scale and Self-Compassion Scale Short Form. Independent-samples t tests measured the differences between the 2 groups. Findings indicated that students who did not experience contemplative pedagogy exercises in the classroom were more likely to self-report higher ecoliteracy. A possible interpretation of these findings is that current contemplative pedagogy exercises may focus students' attention internally and not adequately promote the world-centered view that would more readily advance student ecoliteracy skills. Results of this study provide further insight that may inform professional development and contemplative pedagogy exercises that empowers students' ecoliteracy skills by encouraging critical thinking, action, and compassion towards positive social change.

Humanity is on the threshold of recognizing the fundamental error in its view of life and death. Both death as well as active life is necessary to the vital formation of a larger, more essential whole. In this paper, I apply the sociology of knowledge and change as it pertains to death and focus on ways in which we can step outside its traditional frameworks and limitations. I also discuss topics related to death such as birth, aging, sickness, and war, and examine cultural differences in attitudes toward death. I offer varying perspectives including the Buddhist view and from these draw implications and conclusions. I apply the lenses of contemporary social scientists such as Edgar Morin, Kenneth Gergen, Edward Stewart, Milton Bennett, Mary Catherine Bateson, E. Doyle McCarthy, Philip Slater, and Piotr Sztompka. To these I add other relevant passages from the writings and speeches of key thinkers on the topic of death, in particular, Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, and educator, Daisaku Ikeda. To construct a more humanistic and sustainable view of life, it is first of all crucial to establish a culture which perceives death in its larger living context as but one cycle in the expansive eternity of life.

In this article, sustainability education is defined within the three orders of change— education about, for, and as sustainability. The third-order change, education as sustainability is defined as transformative sustainability education—an ontological change in how humans and the material world relate. The dominant higher educational paradigm tends to educate about subject matter (i.e., sustainability) distanced from material and focuses on individual human cognition. This does not go far enough to enact sustainable change. Rather, a human and nonhuman materialization within teaching and learning is explained through agential realism, as conceptualized by Barad. The author narrates her way through her own transformative learning journey as an environmental science and sustainability educator going from a reductionist paradigm instructor into a relationality paradigm educator living into sustainability. From dualist teaching in environmental and human health where the study of food was an object, she undertook teaching and research on the pedagogy of food as a material subject. The findings explore the practice of agential realism in relation to the field of transformative sustainability education, namely, that teaching and learning intra-actively engages body, mind, and all material, including food, water, soil, trees, people, and communities. This is a profoundly transformative pedagogic shift in higher education. Whether we teach sustainability-related subject matter or not, a relational ontology of teaching and learning has the potential to create the

Education is a major force for economic and social wellbeing. Despite high aspirations, education at all levels can be expensive and ineffective. Three Grand Challenges are identified:(1) enable people to learn orders of magnitude more effectively,(2) enable people to learn at orders of magnitude less cost, and (3) demonstrate success by exemplary interdisciplinary education in complex systems science. A ten year 'man-on-the-moon'project is proposed in which FuturICT's unique combination of Complexity, Social and Computing ...

Autoethnography covers a wide range of narrative representations, thereby bridging the gap of the boundaries by expressing autoethnographers' painful and gainful lived experiences. These representations arise from local stories, vignettes, dialogues, and role plays by unfolding action, reaction, and interaction in the form of self-narration. Likewise, the autoethnographic texts must exhibit the autoethnographers' critical reflections on the overall process of the inquiry. These exhibitions shall alert the autoethnographers' research ethics, reflexivity, alternative modes of representation, inquiry, and storytelling. The original articles in this issue that rises from the domain of critical social theories within the various ranges of theoretical perspectives include journeying through informing, reforming, and transforming teacher education; critical ethnographic research tradition; a critical and political reading of the excerpts of myths; climate change education and its interface with indigenous knowledge and general traits of the participants as transformed teachers.

The paper presents analysis of shifts in adult and continuing education practices including: goal setting, nature of the learner, character of education, and its elements including the sources in the educational process, evaluation of its outcomes, and social (micro-social) role of education
The author explores innovative vs. conventional adult learning, and introduces several new approaches to adult education.
Conceptual challenges (paradoxes) are considered that do not fit the traditional educationalist’s thinking. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5937%2FIJCRSEE1601067K

Human Learning in the Anthropocene (HLA) is a new initiative by the Learning Development Institute (LDI) aimed at researching, conceptualizing and creating the conditions for learning called for by the challenges humanity faces in the current geological epoch, the Anthropocene. HLA comes in the wake of a prior ten-year long initiative that focused on Building the Scientific Mind (BtSM). This paper marks the start of the HLA initiative. It is meant to be an invitation to reflective dialogue on the issues presented in it. In line with earlier work by the Learning Development Institute, it calls for critical reflection on the meaning of learning, the settings in which learning evolves along the lifespan, the conditions that allow learning to happen, and its importance for the development of mind. Such reflection is an acute necessity in the Anthropocene, the geological epoch in which human activity has begun to impact significantly on our planetary environment.

El presente estudio de caso usa principios de la Ciencia de la Complejidad como marco teórico para el análisis de la estrategia de comunicación implementada por Puntos de Encuentro, así como para explorar algunas de las críticas más recientes a las teorías y modelos de evaluación de proyectos para el cambio social. Los resultados de este estudio sugieren que Puntos de Encuentro ha aplicado de manera intuitiva varios principios de la Ciencia de la Complejidad en el diseño, implementación y evaluación de su estrategia de comunicación: la dependencia histórica y contextual del cambio social, su aspecto no lineal y paradójico, la superioridad del todo sobre la suma de las partes, la relevancia de la calidad de las relaciones y las interacciones, los beneficios del control descentralizado para el surgimiento de un nuevo orden y para la auto-organización social, y la importancia de un flujo libre, diverso y participativo de información relevante al sistema para que este pueda cambiar. Com...

Education is a major force for economic and social wellbeing. Despite high aspirations, education at all levels can be expensive and ineffective. Three Grand Challenges are identified:(1) enable people to learn orders of magnitude more effectively,(2) enable people to learn at orders of magnitude less cost, and (3) demonstrate success by exemplary interdisciplinary education in complex systems science. A ten year 'man-on-the-moon'project is proposed in which FuturICT's unique combination of Complexity, Social and Computing ...

The article presents innovative phenomena of life-long learning, adult and continuous education, and related conceptual paradoxes. Many of educational practices are not recognized as objects of educational theory, and may be regarded as ‘Unidentified Educational Objects’. The paradoxes are analyzed as challenges posting new questions for Didactics as theory of education. The author suggests a new concept of Innovative Education as a process of learning experience 'on the run', generating and translating experience which is not only subjectively, but rather objectively new. Innovative Education is seen as a tool for dealing with crisis situations, including personal, career, performance, and organisational crisis.  In its social aspect Innovative Education is seen as a positive way to design non-violent social change, passing through 'breaks in continuity' of current social development.

Transformative learning is a perspective on adult learning that has typically been investigated qualitatively. A new research instrument, the Transformative Learning Environments Survey (TLES), has been demonstrated as a valid and reliable way to look at transformative learning from the student’s perspective of him or herself and of the psychosocial environment in which they are learning.

The TLES was administered in a two-year community college setting. The results of the instrument validation and a follow up study are presented.

Education is a major force for economic and social wellbeing.
Despite high aspirations, education at all levels can be expensive and
ineffective. Three Grand Challenges are identified: (1) enable people to
learn orders of magnitude more effectively, (2) enable people to learn
at orders of magnitude less cost, and (3) demonstrate success by exemplary
interdisciplinary education in complex systems science. A ten year
‘man-on-the-moon’ project is proposed in which FuturICT’s unique
combination of Complexity, Social and Computing Sciences could provide
an urgently needed transdisciplinary language for making sense
of educational systems. In close dialogue with educational theory and
practice, and grounded in the emerging data science and learning analytics
paradigms, this will translate into practical tools (both analytical
and computational) for researchers, practitioners and leaders; generative
principles for resilient educational ecosystems; and innovation for
radically scalable, yet personalised, learner engagement and assessment.
The proposed Education Accelerator will serve as a ‘wind tunnel’ for
testing these ideas in the context of real educational programmes, with an international virtual campus delivering complex systems education
exploiting the new understanding of complex, social, computationally
enhanced organisational structure developed within FuturICT.