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.