Judith Beth Cohen & Jo Ann Gammel 
Transformative Learning and Adult Higher Education 
New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Number 147

Presenting current trends in transformative learning and adult higher education, this volume paints a vivid picture of the Transformative Learning theory in action. The concepts that knit these articles together despite the variety of educational settings and populations are: relationships, community, and the body experience–often missing in higher education.

This volume includes:

* the voices of marginalized populations often excluded from research studies such as community college students, emerging adults with learning differences, English language learners, native Alaskans, African-American health educators, doctoral students, and yoga practitioners;
* new paradigms for thinking about adult undergraduate education;
* new ways to deal with social conflict and advise doctoral students; and
* personal stories from Black women leaders, college teachers, student writers as well as pregnant women, and social service providers.

This is the 147th volume of this Jossey-Bass higher education series. It offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques for improving college teaching based on the experience of seasoned instructors and the latest findings of educational and psychological researchers.

Table of Content

EDITORS’ NOTES 7
Judith Beth Cohen, Jo Ann Gammel, Amy Rutstein-Riley

1. The Spiral Road of Transformative Learning: Through the Lens of College Students with Learning Differences 11
Lynn Abrahams

This chapter explores how college students with diagnosed learning differences develop identity within the family system.

2. Transformative Learning and the Road to Maternal Leadership 19
Rachel Panton

This study of three African-American holistic health educators shows how their woman-centered learning cultures influenced their personal transformations and leadership roles.

3. A Relational Approach to Mentoring Women Doctoral Students 27
Jo Ann Gammel, Amy Rutstein-Riley

In an examination of six dyads of women advisors and advisees in one doctoral program, the authors found that a relational model for mentoring women can be an alternative to the authority-based approach most common to doctoral work.

4. Examining Transformation on the Road to the Professoriate 37
Anne C. Benoit

In this chapter, two college teachers, an African-American woman and a White man, identify pivotal events in their development as educators.

5. Whose Job Is It to Change? 47
Kathryn L. Nielsen

Co-director of a college writing center proposes a plan for insitutional change that honors the voices of English language learners rather than expecting them to adjust to the dominant instituational culture.

6. Making Voices Visible: Using Visual Data in Teacher Education and Research 57
Debra Murphy

This chapter describes changes in the thinking and practice of eight early childhood teachers after they used visual data to complete a teacher research assignment in a community college teacher education course.

7. Teaching Creative Nonfiction: The Transformative Nature of the Workshop Method 67
Suzanne Cope

A writer and teacher of nonfiction examines the widely used workshop method to show how student writers gain greater control over their choice of language, and insight into the meaning of their writing.

8. Transformative Graduate Education Through the Use of Restorative Practices 75
John W. Bailie, Craig W. Adamson

As professors and administrators in a graduate program based upon Restorative Justice, these authors show how classroom pedagogy can model alternatives that promote personal and professional transformation.

9. Adult Learning, Transformative Education, and Indigenous Epistemology 87
Diane Mc Eachern

A social worker, teaching in an undergraduate satellite program in Alaska, explores how a culturally resonant degree program can overcome the barriers faced by native Yupik women attending college.

10. Iyengar Yoga for Motherhood: Teaching Transformation in a Nonformal Learning Environment 97
Amy Tate

A yoga teacher and practitioner explores the widespread phenomenon of yoga by focusing on its empowering effects for pregnant women and its implications for challenging the traditional medical model.

11. Embodying Authenticity in Higher Education 107
Laura Douglass

The author explores how listening to the wisdom of her body was a primary method she used to interpret the competing demands and disorienting dilemmas of scholarship, teaching, and administration.

INDEX 117

About the author

Volume Editors:
Judith Beth Cohen, Ph.D., is a writer, yoga instructor, former graduate program coordinator, and professor emerita at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.

Jo Ann Gammel, Ed.D., is the Director of the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership: Higher Education program in the Van Loan School at Endicott College.

Amy Rutstein-Riley, Ph.D., M.P.H. is the Dean of Faculty and Associate Professor of Sociology at Lesley University.

Series Editor-in-Chief:
Catherine M. Wehlburg is the assistant provost for Institutional Effectiveness at Texas Christian University.