Sr. Ma. Alma Immacolata S.

Mangahas, SFSC

Transformation should be the guiding principle that underpins all educational endeavor. We should make learners transformation the explicit goal of all educational programs and encounters.

The glory of God is man fully alive.

We believe that education is essentially about the promotion of personhood and the development of full human potential.

The transformative process requires that educational programs explicitly address critical and analytical skills. It also integrates an active search for meaning as an instrument to transformed understanding of learning experience.

Part of the process of transformative education is exposure to diverse experiences, as well as the experience of discomfort, tension and chaos.
This is the reason why at IMMA we employ not only the formal curriculum but also what others call informal curriuclum.

For transformation to be the goal, it involves the intention from both policy and institutional level as well as the intentional efforts from the individuals themselves.

Transformational Education is not only the job of the administrators but a collegial effort of the administrators, faculty, staff and stake holders

For them to arrive at that level, we need to explicitly highlight the importance of learners open-mindedness and their courage to take risk, and to change; the readiness to unlearn, their self-motivation and self-confidence to make decisions and take responsibility.

This calls for a paradigm shift in the area of instruction, methodology, and in relating to the students.

For education to be transformative, there needs a safe and supportive environment in which a learning space can be created to enable learners to confront chaos, pain, fears and bewilderedness.

Its Immaculate

Within a safe environment, learners are free from judgment, bullying, negative conflicts and intimidation, so that they can be courageous enough to be pushed to the boundaries of their realities.

Hence learners are more likely to discover all aspects of themselves and develop as whole-persons.

Sustaining a learning space is crucial in facilitating transformative education.

A sustainable learning environment involves the following:

a.) Effective training for all educational staff.

Teachers must aim for their own personal and professional growth and development.

b.) Human relations

underlie the whole educational process. When human relationship penetrates the learning environment, which is often defined as a learning community, learning is more likely to become transformative.

c.) Human scale.

This could mean that teachers break large classes into smaller groups and allow peer tutoring and collaborative learning to take place.

When a learning environment is humanscale, teachers could be more sensitive to learners diverse learning and other needs and the learning environment is more supportive in nurturing and catering for learners interests and growth. Learners need to be exposed to as wide a range of contexts as possible.

This means that transformative education is supportive of multiple intelligence. Cognitive is just one aspect. This had been the premise why at IMMA we instituted the IRGE, in order to cater to the multiple intelligences of our students.

For those who pursue

it seriously, teaching is a calling, a summons from within; it is among lifes noblest and most responsible activities an activity in which we have all engaged at one time or another, as parents, workers and friends. (Banner & Cannon, 1997: ix)

We acknowledge that for education to be transformative, teachers should be perceived as role models, facilitators, mentors, coinquirers, critical friends, experienced co-learners, respectful guides, and compassionate helpers in the educational process.

The notion of institutions as learning communities is fundamental in constructing a new relationship between the learner, the teacher and the institution.

This calls that we enhance our relationship with our staff ands students and establish a relationship wherein all will have the opportunity to grow and be happy.

Such a relationship promotes leadership rather than management, and calls for full constituency dialogue rather than hierarchy and bureaucracy. To make other persons leaders and not just followers

To establish a communal relationship wherein each others rights are respected than a monarchical relationship wherein the job of the staff are simply to obey.

Relevance. It has been argued that education can only be transformative when the learning experience is relevant to the learners culturally, temporally and contextually.

This challenges Immaculatinian educators to use categories that are not alien to the learners. Categories which they are at home; categories which can they own and understand. This mean that as Filipino Immaculatinian educator catering to Filipino learners, we have to employ our own Filipino pedagogy of education and understand the Filipino psychology of our learners

Integrated program rather than prescriptive curriculum. A formative curriculum implies an ongoing dialogue and communication between the teacher and the learners; this makes learning a collaborative endeavor.

Achieving individuals full potential. The vision of transformative education regards each individual learner as unique, someone who has their own talent and capacity to contribute to their own learning and the wellbeing of society at large.

 Transformative

education is therefore a holistic endeavor that embraces the goal of developing the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, social and interpersonal and many other qualities of the learners.

individual transformation through transformative education leads to a larger scale of transformation social transformation and ultimately building a better world. To effect transformation on a larger scale, it is imperative that there is equal access to education for all.

This call that we at ComEd should make some provisions on how the quality education offered by our schools can be accessible to the poor. This calls for a bold move on the part of SFSC educators.

Transformative education helps individuals become agents of change someone who can act rather than react and be acted upon. It provides the opportunity a learner to transcend the limitations of ones self and maximize change on a much larger scale.

Immaculatinians once they leave the portals of our schools are already armed with the competence and virtues to make a change in a larger scale.

It is to repeat the words of Mahatma Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world. Its so inspiring and thrilling as an educator and administrator when I witness a students or a teachers transformation from a limiting perspective to one that is broader, more inclusive.

1. Triggering events.
Students who feel comfortable and supported in the classroom are more likely to share their thoughts, ask questions, and be open to probing or opposing views.

2. Personal critical reflection. Transformative education promotes reflection and synthesis of thoughts. This enables the student to be at home with his/her feelings and come to the deepest recesses of his/her heart Transformative education enables the students have a heart and mind that understand and care.

3. Discourse with others.

It is in this precursor that one student will exchange assumptions with another on a viewpoint, will share their disorienting dilemma (triggering event), or probe deeper about why they thought the way they did and how they may be changing their assumptions.

Transformative education opens the minds of our students that not only the seemingly intelligent have the monopoly of what is true and right. Students are encourage to express what they feel and their thoughts as we. In this way learning is enriched.

4. Action. According to the theory of transformative learning, action on the transformed assumption is needed to complete the process of transforming the learning.

The needed action can be writing a paper, making a statement to another person, or any other means of asserting the new assumption.

For some, the action is a behavior such as joining a professional organization, working toward new goals, changing the declared academic major, selecting a new career, or, in one situation I observed, forming an organization to address an identified need in the community.

Reflections for educators and educational institutions In addition, educators may need to enhance their technological competencies, and some may need to be more selective and thoughtful with technological applications.

Institutions may need to invest more in designing further capability in their computer platforms and ensure that technology choices are conducive to both teaching and learning in the online environment.

I pose a few items for us as educators to reflect upon and be mindful. Would I detect transformative learning happening in my classroom? Does my classroom foster an environment for transformative learning?

Is there more I can do to foster a climate conducive to transformative learning? Am I mindful of the transformative learning experiences of the students in their online classroom?

How can I assist students on the edge of transformative learning?

REFERENCES:

Transformative Learning: Four Activities that Set the Stage By: Joyce Henderson, EdD in Online Education

Brock, D. E. (2010). Measuring the importance of precursor steps to transformative learning. American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. Adult Education Quarterly 60 (2).

Taylor, E. (2008). Transformative learning: A critical review. ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career and Vocational Education (Information Series, number 374).
Dr. Joyce Henderson is a professor of human resources at the University of Maryland University College. Excerpted from Henderson, J. Transformative Learning in the Online Classroom: Experiences of an Educator Online Classroom (October 2010): 1-3. Print.

PEACE AND GOODWILL! THANK YOU!