Thesis (Ph.D.)--Antioch University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Apr. 29, 2008). Advisor: Carolyn Kenny, PhD. "Submitted to the Ph.D. in Leadership & Change Program of Antioch University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October, 2007"--from the title page. Keywords: transformative learning, middle-age, portraiture; artists, phenomenology, Jungian psychology, midlife, depth psychology, life change. Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-273).

Joining in the search for a post-apartheid South African jurisprudence, this dissertation departs from transformative constitutionalism, as formulated by Karl Klare. Transformative constitutionalism is a long-term project of bringing about social change through the interpretation and enactment of the constitution. Because the project envisions transformation not as single occurrence but as a continuous process, it requires a legal culture that is conducive to this change. Legal culture pertains to the way in which law and legal concepts are approached. The suggestion is that there is a continuation of a formalistic legal culture in South Africa, and this continuation of formalism stifles the transformation envisioned by the South African Constitution and the project of transformative constitutionalism. The idea of continuation emphasises the momentum of legal culture and is related to institutional inertia. This dissertation links conservatism, positivism, formalism and other related concepts with the notion of spectacle as outlined in the work of Njabulo Ndebele and proposes that South African legal culture is a continuation of spectacle by looking at approaches to history, constitutionalism, democracy and rights. The spectacle, like formalism, prefers the determinate, values display and emphasises the external - it is an overt and celebratory mode devoid of thought. Because the spectacle and the continuation of a legal culture of spectacle stifles transformative constitutionalism, the submission is that there should be a refusal of spectacle in South African legal culture and a return to the ordinary. The notion of refusal comes from an article by Karin Van Marle, and links with a critical and slower approach. Ndebele introduces rediscovery of the ordinary, which is related to the concept of the everyday. Opposed to the spectacle, refusal and the ordinary favours contemplation and commemoration. This leads to a view on approaching history, constitutionalism, democracy and rights as refusal of spectacle and rediscovery of the ordinary. It is an attempt to rethink South Africa’s legal culture in order to move closer to the aims of transformative constitutionalism. Following the aesthetic turn in South African jurisprudence, this dissertation makes use of literary examples to illustrate the arguments. Ndebele’s The Cry of Winnie Mandela and Eben Venter’s Horrelpoot introduce the themes of storytelling, travelling and post-colonialism and aptly expands on the call for a refusal of spectacle. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Jurisprudence / LLM / Unrestricted

This thesis presents an exploration of the operationalization of empowerment outcomes in research on transformative participatory evaluations, focusing on the context of international development evaluation. Covering a 15 year period from 1999 and 2014, through the examination of the empirical research literature, the study explores: 1) how empowerment outcomes are measured, 2) the extent to which these outcomes demonstrate empowerment principles, and 3) which factors and conditions appear to enable or detract from the attainment of these outcomes. I found that the current state of the empirical research on transformative participatory evaluation to be largely comprised of reflective case narratives that rely solely on scarcely documented qualitative methods. In general, transformative outcomes do tend to mirror empowerment principles such as ownership, inclusion, democracy, and social justice. Finally, I found that various factors and conditions are critical to the reported attainment of transformative outcomes, particularly in relation to the local program context, for example, reforms in local and international governments that support increased local control over resources and governance, organizational structures and priorities that are congruent with empowerment objectives, and previous experience with empowerment processes. I also highlighted deficiencies in the current empirical research and call on the evaluation community to improve research on transformative approaches to participatory evaluation by suggesting critical areas for practice and writing. These include strengthening research designs and the use of meta-evaluations, further defining and clarifying key terms, and providing rich detail to facilitate further learning in this area.

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Mining has left many long-lasting effects, often negative. Mining continues to this day and questions persist; “what are the legacies of mining, to what extent do our approval and assessment processes consider these effects, are we learning from our past experiences and how can we amplify our learning?” To answer these questions I interviewed people from the mining community of Snow Lake, Manitoba as well as mining and assessment experts from across Canada. Data collected though document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 24 participants were analyzed using mining legacy, EA, and transformative learning frameworks. Results reinforce a suite of negative legacy effects identified in the literature. EA may be the best tool we currently have for long-term planning but data show it is unable to fully consider legacy effects. Learning is important for moving towards sustainability; however, a community’s economic dependence and mining friendly culture can act as barriers to learning. / May 2016

Arts organisations in receipt of public funding should seek to understand the impact of their work, for a variety of reasons. Contemporary outcome-based arts evaluation practice dichotomises impact as intrinsic or instrumental with the latter perspective defining what counts. However, a widely held belief in the transformative power of the arts is apparent in both arts policy and practice. It therefore follows that if evaluation is fundamentally about discerning value then arts evaluation should recognise transformation as core. I contend that visually-based research methods offer alternative ways of seeing and knowing from the methods that dominate arts evaluation practice. As a result, I consider how these methods might help to identify what is transformative within the context of a community arts project. To explore how evaluation can better reflect the transformative power of the arts, I ask three research questions. Firstly, can participants’ experience be theorised and understood as transformative arts-based learning? Secondly, to what extent can participants’ experience of a community arts project be understood through visually-based research methods? Thirdly, what are the implications for existing practices of arts evaluation? I explore these questions in relation to a single participatory arts project. The Happy Lands, funded (primarily) by Creative Scotland, brought together communities across Fife with a professional film crew to create a feature length film based on local stories of mining culture. Employing visual ethnography my research methods included image-elicited interviews with 19 participants over a 20 month period, participant observation during the making of the film, and documentary research. The theoretical contribution I make extends Morgan’s (2010) conception of the transformative potential of travel to the transformative power of the arts, which I define in terms of inspiration, interconnection and insight. I propose a conceptual framework that views the experience of ‘sameness’ (interconnection) and ‘Otherness’ (inspiration) as conducive to the possibility of voice (insight). The interaction of self, other and artwork in the context of the participatory (community) arts project leads to the creation of shared identity (identities) and a sense of belonging manifest in the symbolic status of objects and behaviour (‘spirit of place’) associated with the arts project. Visual research methods, combining subjective meaning-making and objective (representational) qualities, offer opportunities to understand and (re)present participants’ experience. I advance a methodological contribution that suggests image elicitation offers an epistemologically appropriate approach to understanding participant experiences of an inherently visual project. The identification of sense of place and spirit of place can be viewed as indicative of a transformative environment. I contend that the creation of an outcome acknowledging the transformative environment of the arts project would respond to the needs of government but also the beliefs of arts educators effectively redressing the balance of instrumental versus intrinsic worth. Moreover, the subjective and objective possibilities afforded by visually-based research methods would enable the latter to speak creatively, in language(s) reflecting their values. As a result my findings are offered as one possible version of a humanities-inspired approach to arts evaluation (Belfiore and Bennett, 2010b).

Few studies have examined educators' understandings of racial politics in schools and the larger social world through a social interactionist lens (Mead, 1934). Scholars such as Milner (2006) and Sleeter (2008) focus on improving multicultural teacher education. While understandable, this focus prevents scholars from forming a deeper, multi-dimensional picture of teacher learning, racial ideas (synthetic, conscious) and ideologies (derivative, un-examined), and social interaction. This year-long study of 15 participants in the 2009-10 Institutes for Transformative Education asks how educator discourse about the Institute contributes to this picture.Teacher life narratives have been linked to conceptions of race, class, and culture effectively (Johnson, 2002), and constructivist reflection in teacher education (Loughran, 2002) continues to command attention in current work on teacher learning. Yet the context of spoken discourse is often absent from the analysis in these studies, making it difficult to understand how contextual framing in conversation reflects and affects teachers' social mediation of racial politics in their daily practice and their civic lives. This study focuses on talk between the researcher and 15 educators, connecting the local frames of participants' stories of race in schools with state, national, and theoretical discourses.Understandings of critical multicultural education build on interactions between critical multicultural scholars including Grande (2004), hooks (1994, 2006), and Spivak (1988). Analysis of individual educator discourse can only be effective with the aid of previous work on teachers and race (Pollock, 2004, 2008), socially situated learning (Cole, et al., 1978; Guitart, 2008), racetalk in conversation (Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Anderson, 2008), conversation in social interaction (Goffman, 1959; Wooffitt, 2005), institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Foucault, 1972), and educational philosophy (Freire, 1984, 1988).

The promotion of creative culture in the higher education classroom holds the potential to prepare students for their contemporary roles in an increasingly diverse and demanding modern world. A premise of this work is that education should strive to encourage creativity with process-oriented curricula that actively engage students in (a) tasks that are collaborative and novel, (b) the interpretation of new and meaningful experiences, and (c) the synthesis and critical evaluation of ideas at individual, collective, and global levels. This dissertation study identifies aspects of pedagogical design and teaching practice that enable the building of students’ creative capacities. These enhanced capacities, in turn, can lead to transformative experiences that inspire and shape participants’ personal and professional lives. I adopted a dual role as researcher and student to conduct an exploratory study in the context of a PhD level Education course, Contemporary Curriculum Theory. Findings from this exploratory study informed a multiple-case study that involved the observation of two graduate level courses, Professionals in Rural Practice and The Lived Experience of Disability, which together form the unit of analysis for the study. Data sources included: (a) a Learning Activities Survey, modified from King’s (2009) original work; (b) a Creativity Checklist, modified from Munro’s (n.d.) instrument; (c) field observations and field notes; and (d) individual interviews with students and instructors from each course. Data were analyzed by three creative drivers that enabled transformation: (a) multiple ways of knowing, (b) adult conversation, and (c) the storied self. Through this examination of university-level courses of varied disciplines, this research study addresses creativity as a catalyst for transforming the ways in which teachers and students experience knowledge-making in post-secondary education. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2013-12-05 12:37:25.474

This thesis employs phenomenological hermeneutic circle analysis, to investigate structure versus agency and adult identity change in lifelong learning. Achieving transformed agency and enhanced identity is argued to be about other ways of doing and other ways of seeing (Mezirow 2000:21). It proceeds by exploring if curricula employed in education can provide structure and/or the catalyst which allows ‘other’ to be revealed, agency to be regained, and to explicate what contribution curricula might make in transforming adult identities. Drawing upon the disciplines of sociology and psychology it provides holistic interpretations of participant accounts in the contemporary competitive world and explores the interstices in the duality of tensions between the utilitarian, and pragmatic adult, who employs education as a developmental pathway of choice. Interviews with six participants tell individual stories to provide holistic data of their erudition and experiences of cognitive and social change. Data are then employed to essentialise similarities, differences, themes, and congruent essences, and to distil factors which exemplify growth in understanding and expectations of the self. Growth in self-assurance and identity change capability is then contrasted with the fragility of adult identity; whereupon, this thesis critically positions fragility causation amongst the instrumental policies and forces of lifelong learning. Mezirow contends that agency is achieved by elaborating existing frames, learning new frames, transforming habits, and transforming points of view. This thesis moves to discuss the connected nature of these developmental factors and ‘glass ceilings’, and how immanent personal potential is (re) revealed to the adult self. Employing an archaeological hermeneutic research tool which suggests reflection is a central and developing feature in adult’s educational development the thesis finally contends that education is important in the personal delivery of agency over structure, and that curricula of any structurally legitimate form make a significant contribution to allowing persons to both flourish and confront a range of ‘other’ life circumstances and dilemmas.

This thesis is an exploratory case study that investigates the epistemological beliefs of students’ on a Foundation degree in Teaching and learning, and the possible influence of these beliefs on their learning. Critical realism provides the theoretical context for this case study through a multi-phase approach. This study explores the students’ beliefs of knowledge, knowing and learning through the employment of questionnaires and in-depth interviews which reveals the stories and experiences of five of the students. The research data suggests there is an apparent relationship between personal epistemological beliefs and the engagement with learning in higher education for these students. Moreover it emerged that there were personal transformations in their attitudes and beliefs towards knowledge, knowing and learning that had a profound impact on their self-belief. The changes can be attributed, in part, to the students’ capacity for change-readiness and openness to learning mediated by the situated and contextualised nature of the learning environment. Findings from this case study are not generalisable due to its specificity to one particular setting and small number of participants. However, a conceptual model of the relationship between students’ epistemological beliefs and transformation is offered exposing the complexity of social phenomena in real-life settings. The findings are discussed within the context of previous research. As part of my own learning, and in harmony with the theme of learning and change of the participants, I have also explored my learning changes as a result of engaging in my doctoral studies.