This article problematizes current, quantitative approaches to the analysis of culture in foreign language textbooks as objectifying culture, and offers an alternative, semiotic framework that examines texts, images, and tasks as merely engendering particular meanings in the act of semiosis. The authors take as a point of departure developments…

This article explores pedagogical approaches to teaching students how to practice hospitality toward the other. Using case examples from the college classroom, the authors discuss the roots of Christian hospitality and educational theory on transformative learning to explore how students experience engaging with others after they have…

This article analyzes the potential of a series of Youth Action Coalition's (YAC) Arts-for-Change (AfC) youth programs for literacy and identity development, as well as for engaging youth in addressing issues of social justice. Drawing primarily on transcripts of interviews, surveys, and participant-observation fieldnotes inventorying changes in…

The responsibilities of today's educational institutions far exceed basic education. Aside from academics, schools are also responsible for developing citizens who can identify and rectify social injustices. Preparing students to engage in transformative practice requires student-centered classrooms wherein students first reflect on themselves and…

This study was set to investigate how a cohort of ten Indonesian teachers experienced transformations in their teaching professionalism upon receiving an assignment of instructional leadership training to other school leaders. These ten teachers, who came from three different Indonesian Jesuit high schools and one archdiocese-based educational…

The purpose of this study was to examine how nurses who become patients learn compassion toward patients in their professional practice, and examine the role of empathy in the process of learning compassion. The process of learning compassion represents a significant change in the way nurses perceive this aspect of practice. Therefore,…

Although Westerners have used over 200 terms to describe self-directed learning (SDL), it is educators in Confucius heritage cultures (CHC) that have successfully promoted and implemented SDL. This article argues that for learners in the Western cultures, especially in the United States to catch up with learners in other industrialized nations…

Many educators view the process of education as transformative. This transformation is important in all classrooms, but it takes on added importance in prison classrooms. The education that inmates receive in prison can mean the difference between the doorway of freedom with a productive future and the revolving door of recidivism. For many prison…

Daisaku Ikeda (1928- ) is a Buddhist leader, peace builder, school founder, and poet. His own biography and lifework provide a model for how one can transform adversity into alternative opportunities for some of the most disenfranchised students. Scrutinizing Ikeda's official website (www.daisakuikeda.org) reveals an extensive collection of his…

This article provides an initial approach for capturing moments of talk about, around, and for writing to explain why writing groups and writing conferences are so often considered "transformative" for the people involved. After describing the widespread and yet disparate transformations so often attributed to collaborative writing talk, I…

Even though there are multiple literacies, the preoccupation and even reliance on the primacy of functional literacy, as seen as an end-point in the formal process of schooling, masks an ideology that rarely goes interrogated throughout all disciplines. This article considers the obligation and structure of functional literacy, and, in particular,…

Critical Civic Inquiry (CCI) is a transformative student voice initiative that engages students in critical conversations about educational equity and inquiry-based learning to increase student voice and promote civic action. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to assess if participation in CCI increased the psychological empowerment (as…

Transformative learning, and its processes as proposed by Mezirow, has been the subject of much debate. This study contributes to the literature about these debates by examining transformative experiences within a foreign service-learning context. Canadian post-secondary students lived and worked to build a school in solidarity with a community in…

Connecting with others and experiences of dissonance are two factors identified as central to transformative learning in engaged teaching and research (Kiely, 2005). At the same time, these ways of knowing are unpredictable and come with the risk of actually disrupting rather than enhancing learning. This article reports the findings of a mixed…

Colleges of agriculture in the US have been challenged to produce candidates prepared with the knowledge, skills, and disposition to engage in a global agricultural industry. Studies show that one of the most influential factors in secondary student perceptions and outlook is their secondary teachers. The adult learning theory of transformative…