There is a tendency in recent curriculum reforms to put the major emphasis on the status and role of students. The OECD's Education 2030 project, for example, presents the concept of 'student agency' as a key vision for future learning frameworks. The OECD's discourse of student agency appears to serve as a catalyst for spreading the slogan that…

This study explores how Christian educators in liberal arts universities understand the contribution of wonder-filled moments in their classrooms. As a transformative emotion, wonder and the related awe challenge education's prevailing objectification and instrumentalization, inviting students and educators to embrace an appreciative and open…

In the face of challenging circumstances, many teachers turn to spirituality for sustenance and strength. Yet spirituality's place in education and in educators' lives has long been a matter of confusion and contention, not least because of the ambiguity of the term in its common usage. What is its relationship to religion? And what defines it? In…

This paper explores the experiences of six teacher learners and one teacher educator in a graduate course on aesthetic education at a Midwestern university in the U.S. Using collective autoethnography and arts-practice research, the researcher/participants examine how aesthetic experiences were activated in the learning environment and how this…

Teachers in public schools regularly face labor oppression. Despite this reality, in research and practice, "social justice teacher preparation" has largely neglected the topic of "labor struggle." We offer this community auto-ethnography as a collective reflection on how we came to our own understandings around these issues…

Philosophers of education may imagine their work has great relevance to people trying to lead K-12 schools. In the current context, it would seem philosophers of education are sorely needed. Standardized assessments maintain their hold on curriculum and instruction, differentially affecting schools whether they are the targets of accountability…

This article focuses on the trajectories of adults returning to full-time study in technical and vocational education and training. The results presented are drawn from a critical ethnography conducted in a General and vocational colleges (referred to as cégep, their French acronym) in Montréal, Québec. The aim of the study was to describe and…

Universities are increasingly working to better prepare students for success in the workforce and increasingly advocating high-impact learning experiences. This case study explores the short-term impacts on students who participated in a short-term service-learning study abroad program in Ireland through a lens of Transformative Learning Theory.…

This paper critically examines the systemic harm inflicted on Black students through anti-Black classroom management and disciplinary practices, positioning Pro-Blackness as a transformative framework for healing and justice. Grounded in healing justice and African Diaspora Literacy, the discussion highlights the pervasive impact of the…

Douglas Reeves, school leadership expert and founder of the Equity and Excellence Institute, describes how we can use lessons from the pandemic to reshape teacher learning.

Both "Bildung" and transformative learning theory focus on the transformative nature of education. Even though they have been developed in different continents and fairly independently of each other, they intersect, and at face value, they might appear to be very similar to each other. Both notions, though are perceived differently by…

The aim of this paper is to understand "whiteness" as a political category which organizes ordinary experience. I will use a phenomenological framework in order to denaturalize the white experience and make it a possible object of transformation and education. A description of "whiteness" as a category of experience has…

There has been an increased emphasis for professionals within the field of student affairs to focus on programming that will engage and help support increasingly diverse student populations on (Odag, Wallin, & Kedzior, 2016). Bowman (2012) writes: "Many entering college students have had limited opportunities for meaningful interactions…

In this article, I argue that critical discourse in Mezirow's theory of transformative learning is a constructionist, ontological act that serves to support an individual's critical reflection, which, in turn, is a constructivist, epistemological act. The notion of onto-epistemology is helpful in bringing to the fore the entanglement of these two…

This paper reports on a research project exploring the aspirations, assumptions and experiences of students on a Master's in Education course. Professional Learning (PL) for teachers in England has increasingly prescribed content and delivery, is highly regulated and embedded within politically sanctioned evidence-based research, structured in…