This study investigates how songs and songwriting can facilitate transformative learning experiences. Semi-structured interviews conducted with three professional singer-songwriters from different backgrounds helped define how songs and songwriting can nurture one's soul work, that is, emotions individuation, dialogue between conscious and…

This paper explores the value of autoethnography in the context of student teaching and learning. The manuscript situates autoethnography within restorative and critical pedagogies and draws from students' impressions to examine how autoethnography aids in developing self-awareness, empathy, and vulnerability as emotional resiliency. Further…

This research paper aimed to study the transformation of Being in Mahmoud Darwish's last poem "The Dice Player" through a Heideggerian framework analysis. It took Heidegger's famous quote "The poets are in the vanguard of a changed conception of Being" as a point of departure in investigating and unveiling the assumed…

Mezirow's theory of transformative learning presupposes agency. Agency is the means by which the limitations of an inadequate meaning perspective are transcended. It is the creative activity necessitated by an encounter with a disorienting dilemma. This implies that transformation cannot be achieved "from within" the existent meaning…

How can the use of metaphors promote sustainable resilience in an educational process? How can educators and pastoral workers facilitate transformative learning by promoting strategies for coping with challenges? The paper answers these questions from a religious and psychological perspective by applying a biographical approach. By evaluating the…

This study examines how students experienced and made meaning of a novel academic course in mindfulness, offered to foster holistic learning through self-knowledge. For this interpretive phenomenological analysis, data were collected through critical reflective journals and semistructured interviews. The findings suggest that the course allowed…

Self@arts is a performing arts programme delivered to Australian Defence Force personnel undergoing rehabilitation for physical and/or psychological injuries. In contrast to the cognitive emphasis within the dominant therapeutic arts model, self@arts provides participants with agency for re-narrating the self through a transformative, ritual…

In this article, I set up a Heideggerian framework of research in order to investigate the phenomenon of "looking at the smartphone screen," focusing especially on "the desire to look," which I see as intricately connected with "the desire to know" and "the desire to be." With a clear phenomenological…

In contemporary culture, it is natural to think that purchasing and owning the "right" possessions results in happiness. This belief supports our loyalty to consumer society. However, several lines of research demonstrate that high consumption lifestyles and materialistic values are not a trustworthy path to well-being. Instead,…

Why do some study abroad students improve their intercultural skills, while others revert to less sophisticated ways of making sense of cultural difference? Both intercultural competence theory and transformative learning theory attempt to explain why student intercultural learning occurs, but they only provide partial answers. Building on our…

Fostering positive and meaningful change amongst South African youth whose schooling and life experiences have rendered them largely ill-prepared, demotivated and often traumatised, is a complex endeavour, but one which needs urgent attention. Government programmes tend to ignore the psycho-social demands of the transition from unemployed…

Scholars and practitioners alike often assume that discomfort is a necessary and productive aspect of the college experience. We used a range of theories grounded in the concept of dissonance to question these assumptions and critically analyze the role of discomfort in collegiate learning and development for today's diverse college student…

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate students' developmental readiness to navigate dissonance and experience transformation as they engaged in an international service-learning program. Using case-study methodology, researchers collected data from a diverse group of 7 graduate students and 5 undergraduate students who…

This action research exploratory study sought to learn how to better develop my practice by using grounded theory. It explored the apparent cognitive transformational experience of nine participants over a period of four weeks after the implementation of an intervention called Mindfulness into Action. The informal intervention was used with the…

In this study, I employed narrative inquiry supported by intersectionality theory to explore the experiences of 6 antiracist, White, feminist undergraduate women. A conceptual model of antiracist identity development emerged from the data. Participants described vivid experiences with guilt, shame, and fear that kept them from engaging in allied…