TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING
Teaching to the Whole Student for Transformation
Those of you who attended the opening keynote session at the 2014 Transformative
Learning Conference on March 28, 2014, here at UCO heard Dr. Dan Glisczinski speak
about the impact of physical activity on brain function. He also spoke about the
emotional component in learning and how perceived threat triggers the amygdalae in
the brain to sabotage long-term storage of information.
(Dan’s demonstration involved the right amygdala and the left amygdala as bouncers
guarding the entrance to long-term memory.)
The physical activity and emotional aspects of learning highlight the two “other” domains
of learning that can be given short shrift in planning college-level instruction. Though we
carefully plan how we’ll help students make progress in the cognitive domain — that is,
we take for granted the need to help them understand the material and the content —
we often don’t plan as carefully for the psychomotor domain (what students physically
do to learn or the physical skill they are expected to possess at class’ end) or the
affective domain (what emotions students experience during learning and the value
propositions we want students to accept as a result of having taken the class).
Psychomotor and affective components, however, are often (usually?) key aspects of
what makes a learning experience transformative.
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First, a key emotional aspect of Transformative Learning: When a student experiences
a change or expansion in perspective — something we strive for as teachers — that
kind of personal mindset alteration can necessarily trigger an emotional response.
Examples:
● You’re teaching about micro-lending in a business class. The example given
concerns a Kiva.org project to fund a women’s-owned business in an
impoverished region, and the description of why the women need to earn their
own money due to the oppressive conditions in which they live moves a student
to tears.
● You’re teaching an engineering robotics course, and the team of students that
designed and built the robot for the regional competition has just witnessed its
robot win the competition. Jubilant students high-five each other and whoop in
delight.
● You’re teaching an environmental science class. You take the class on a field trip
to a place just outside the city that is notorious for trash, dumping, and pollution
of the stream that runs through this area. You see a student who’s never
experienced pollution like this sit down on the bank of the stream and cry.
These are the kinds of emotion-laden student learning experiences that most faculty
have experienced, know about, and/or can relate to. They are also certainly
transformative for students.
Understanding that affect is frequently involved in transformative experiences, we must
become comfortable as teachers with the emotionalism that can accompany an a-ha
moment. Because our classrooms must be safe places for learning, they must also be
supportive spaces when transformation-prompted emotionalism occurs.
How do we accomplish this?
As with modeling how you think (“thinking out loud for you students” as a way to help
them develop disciplinary thinking skills), modeling how you emote is also an important
teaching strategy. This doesn’t mean you must become overly emotional as a
presenter, but it does mean you should be comfortable enough to describe one or two
of your own emotionally impactful learning experiences in a way that communicates
your own acceptance of the legitimacy of those learning experiences and the emotions
involved.
Faculty have powerful influences on students’ implicit learning. When our students
realize we understand the necessary emotional context in much learning, they are more
likely to accept the emotionalism that may arise in their own transformative moments.
Next, learning in general, whether “transformative” or not, requires the human brain to
encode information into long-term memory. As Dr. Glisczinski explained to the TL
Conference audience, punitive-sounding syllabi and class policies (“you must be on
time or you’ll suffer a grade reduction; excessive absences will result in automatic class
expulsion”) can create a climate of threat, and threat riles up the amygdalae bouncers,
who then effectively block information from being encoded into long-term memory.
Consider your language and tone in communicating with students. We want to
emphasize the need for personal responsibility, but that message and our policies —
even strict policies — can be communicated in ways that minimize threat.
Why not communicate class requirements in a way that doesn’t rile the amygdalae
bouncers?
The second “other” learning domain is psychomotor. We’ll focus here on the positive
results of exercise on student learning. It was Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey (2008)
who coined the term, “Miracle-gro for the brain” when speaking of Brain-Derived
Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), a substance that improves the signal strength of the
communication between the synaptic interfaces of neurons. The result is more efficient
learning. BDNF also encourages the growth of new neurons, and it helps protect
neurons against the deleterious effects of stress.
In short, BDNF plays an important role in maximizing one’s ability to learn and retain
information.
How do you increase the amount of BDNF in your brain?
You exercise.
As Dr. Glisczinski summarized for the TL Conference audience, the amount of exercise
necessary to generate additional BDNF can be remembered by thinking of “3": exercise
3 times a week for 30 minutes at a rate which will increase your heart rate to Zone 3
(which is fast enough that you can’t carry on a conversation in a normal manner
because you’d be too out of breath to do so).
Adopting this formula as a personal exercise routine could make a big difference for
many college students. Especially in an age of the ubiquitous screen (tablet, smart
phone, computer — all in front of us for hours at a time and therefore not allowing the
same degree of physical activity as in their absence), following the Rule of 3's will be
good for your students’ brains and their waistlines.
Transformative Learning probably can be mostly a cognitive experience, but the very
nature of perspective expansion means it usually includes emotional and/or physical
aspects, as well.
References
Ratey, J. J. (2008). Spark: The revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain.
New York: Little, Brown and Company.