Over the last 10–20 years, however, and especially in connection with requirements concerning lifelong learning and the development of adult education programmes, an urgent need has arisen to realise that there is a form of learning that is even more far-reaching in nature than that which Piaget characterised as accommodation. Viewed in relation to the already outlined learning types character of foundation, development and reorgan- isation, respectively, of mental schemes, this concerns the learning that takes place when a large number of schemes are reorganised at the same time and with relation to all three dimensions of learning.
Historically, this is a type of learning that has been known for a long time in the field of psychotherapy, but which has not been understood in relation to the concept of learning and has not at all been regarded as something that could have to do with schooling and teaching. The oldest term referring to this type of learning is probably the concept of catharsis, developed by Freud already at the end of the nineteenth century as a term for the mental breakthrough that successful psychoanalytical treatment could trigger (Freud and Breuer 1956 [1895]).
The first to relate such a breakthrough to a learning understanding would, however, seem to have been the American psychotherapist Carl Rogers (1902–1987), who is regarded as one of the key figures in the previously
mentioned humanistic psychology. In the course of his extensive work he dealt, inter alia, with the link between psychotherapy and learning and developed the procedures which he called client-centred therapy and student- centred teaching (Rogers 1951, 1959, 1961, 1969). In these contexts Rogers developed the concept about significant learning, which involves ‘a change in the organization of the self ’(Rogers 1951, p. 390), as it involves ‘the whole person, both his emotions and the cognitive aspects are involved in the learning’ (Rogers 1969, p. 5), and which he subsequently defined more precisely in the following statement:
By significant learning I mean learning which is more than an accumulation of facts. It is learning which makes a difference – in the individual’s behaviour, in the course of action he chooses in the future, in his attitudes and in his personality. It is a pervasive learning which is not just an accretion of knowledge, but which interpenetrates with every portion of his existence.
(Rogers 1961, p. 280) It is immediately obvious that Rogers’s formulation about ‘the organisation of the self ’, ‘the whole person’ and ‘every portion of his existence’ exceed what above is described as accommodation. Nevertheless, there is a parallel to Nissen’s formulation about the strain involved in accommodative learning when time and time again Rogers points out that:
any significant learning involves a certain amount of pain, either pain connected with the learning itself or distress connected with giving up certain previous learnings . . . learning which involves a change in self organization – in the perception of oneself – is threatening and tends to be resisted . . . all significant learning is to some degree painful and involves turbulence, within the individual and within the system.
(Rogers 1969, pp. 157–158, 159, 339) Significant learning is something one only becomes engaged in when faced by a situation or challenge exceeding what one can manage on one’s existing personal basis, but which one unavoidably must win over in order to get further – i.e. a crisis that is often existential in nature.
However, since the time Rogers formulated his concept of significant learning society has developed in a way that leads more people into such existential crises while at the same time having a higher degree of expec- tations of the education system, and adult education in particular, to handle such crises. The extremely rapid rate of change in social development, globalisation’s breaking down of borders and cultures, and breakdown in a long series of traditional patterns of interpretation of, for example, religious, ideological, class and traditional natures, all bring more and more people into exile, sudden involuntary unemployment, divorce and other losses of
1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44111
close relations that create deep personal crises. At the same time there is a rising economically conditioned societal interest in such crises being quickly resolved, at least to such an extent that the person in question can return to the labour market.
When attention is paid to what is actually going on in the adult education programmes offered to ordinary people with no special educational quali- fications, it becomes obvious that this is to a high degree a form of crisis help requiring ‘significant learning’, but that naturally cannot be resolved to the necessary extent through lengthy and costly individual psychotherapy. This is why the people in question end up in different types of adult education as participants who need ‘rehabilitation’, ‘retraining’ or ‘personal development’ (see Illeris 2003b, 2004). It is striking that throughout the same period and independently of each other (at least) three different learning concepts have been developed that have thematised these matters in a learning theory context on the basis of very different approaches.
First, there is Finnish Yrjö Engeström’s concept of learning by expanding, which I have previously discussed (section 4.1. – Engeström 1987). As mentioned, it has been formulated by combining the cultural historical learning approach and the concept of the zone of proximal development with Gregory Bateson’s system of theoretically oriented learning typology – and the main point is that this special type of learning appears when the learner transcends the premises and fundamental conditions that apply to the person’s ‘general’ assimilative and accommodative learning.
Second, there is the German sociologist and biography researcher Peter Alheit’s concept of transitory learning (Alheit 1994, 1995). In the terms of this concept learning is regarded in relation to the learner’s life cycle or biography, which precisely through societally determined occurrences is faced with requirements concerning transcending the previous life foundation as a transition from one life phase to another.
Third and finally, there is the American adult educator Jack Mezirow’s by now thoroughly documented and discussed concept of transformative learning, which he has most recently defined as follows:
Transformative learning refers to the process by which we transform our taken-for-granted frames of reference (meaning perspectives, habits of mind, mind-sets), to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action.
(Mezirow 2000, pp. 7–8) It should be noted here that although Mezirow’s definition is immediately more cognitively oriented than the other mentioned here, both here and in other contexts he also always refers to emotion and action.
Thus, as a whole, I view the concepts of significant, expansive, transitory and transformative learning as expressions that fundamentally cover the same type of learning on the basis of different perspectives. In the following I have chosen to utilise Mezirow’s concept of transformative learning solely because it is the most widespread and best known of the terms mentioned and because linguistically it is in line with the concepts already introduced about cumulative, assimilative and accommodative learning.
At the same time, however, I would stress that this concerns learning that – as formulated by Rogers – implies a restructuring of the organisation of the self and thereby also a coherent restructuring and coupling of a great number of mental schemes that lead to change in the individual personality. It is very important to maintain this when, as here, the concept is included in a learning typology, because neither Rogers, Engeström, Alheit nor Mezirow lay down clear criteria for where the borderline goes between this type of learning and other learning. Mezirow, in particular, includes many examples of learning that are termed transformative, even though it would probably be understood as accommodative in the typology outlined here.
It is obvious that transformative learning is extremely demanding and a strain, and only takes places when the learner is in a situation with no other way out that can be experienced as sustainable. As Engeström, in particular, has pointed out, in some cases such learning can take place as a sudden breakthrough, but perhaps more commonly through a lengthy process in which social relations play a significant role. Under all circumstances this is what one more familiarly would call crisis resolution and what is typically experienced as a release mentally and frequently also physically. One can feel born again as a new and better person, and suchlike expressions, which I have often come across in my own research on the Danish adult education programmes.
But it is also clear that the adult education programmes and their staff rarely have an educational background that can meet the demands that learning of this nature can involve, and that, therefore, it is often in spite of this, and to a high degree driven by the learner’s own efforts and tenacity, when adult education programmes trigger such a learning process, and that in all likelihood there are many cases where it cannot take place under the given conditions.