transformative learning – Silence and Voice

Shifting relations with the more-than-human: Six threshold concepts for transformative sustainability learning – An Article Summary

After some time traveling for work, having done a lot of reading along the way, I am finally pausing enough to share some of what I learned via a #5Papers strategy:

1/ I read Barrett, Harmin, Maracle, Patterson, Thomson, Flowers, & Bors (2016)…

2/ …Shifting relations with the more-than-human: six threshold concepts for transformative sustainability learning

3/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2015.1121378 via #5Papers Continue reading “Shifting relations with the more-than-human: Six threshold concepts for transformative sustainability learning – An Article Summary“

EduWander: An Approach to #rhizo15

I have been thinking about my post yesterday, What is my #rhizo15 Learning Subjective?, especially about my Learning Subjective for #rhizo15 as:

The joy is in the journey, wherever it may lead.

and want to clarify this a bit.

Unlike the need for an ongoing, frequent set of (learning) rituals, which to Terry’s point in his well-considered post Creating Ritual Space in #Rhizo15: Why and How are frequently common for a sense of “us” in a learning community, I find that having a community out there, available via Twitter, Facebook, the Google Community, and a handful of other technologies, is enough for me this time around.

Thinking also of Barry’s Rhizomatic incitations, I notice I am not alone in my wondering and wandering. Perhaps there is a trend here?

Granted, I am a somewhat mature learner. I am Continue reading “EduWander: An Approach to #rhizo15“

What is my #rhizo15 Learning Subjective?

While I recently posted about Why I am engaging in #rhizo15 and Learning Liminality I have still somehow avoided discussing my Learning Subjectives (as learning objectives are not readily possible when we do not know where we are going).

Perhaps this is because I so often avoid personal learning objectives.

I frequently retreat into researcher mode. Specifically as a qualitative researcher, where I always want to ask questions such as, “Why?, “Tell me what you mean by that?,” and “How did you…?” I often avoid making declarative comments, statements, or proclamations as, more often than not, I am wrong in some way. I hate being wrong, and find it easier to commit to the extent I can speak to, while avoiding presenting myself or my ideas narrowly that I somehow exclude other possibilities.

This all begs the question, what are my learning subjectives for #rhizo15?

Wow, I really do not know.

It is easy to say, “To build my network,” but that somehow seems to be a bit selfish, as if Continue reading “What is my #rhizo15 Learning Subjective?“

Discussing the A-Ha! in CPsquare

Our conversation has started in the CPsquare community, where I am sharing my current doctoral studies and approaching thesis. One of the community facilitators mentioned the a-ha moment, and this reminded me how increasingly central this is to my work. Don’t you wish we could bottle and share it?

I came to my current academic program with an interest in exploring transformative learning experiences in distance learning, and while I have studied these experiences from a number of perspectives, including from the perspective of doctoral learners, it is this a-ha experience, sometimes called a conceptual threshold, threshold concept, or light bulb moment, that most interests me.

What factors lead some people to have this a-ha, and not others?
Is there any content or ideas that tend to have this effect on people?
What does this experience feel like?
What support helps sustain people through this?
What ethical issues arise, especially when this experience may be encouraged by a faculty member or researcher?

These are some of those questions that inspire me, as they all lead to the pinnacle, IMHO, of the central questions in education — What did you learn and what will you do with it?

Academic “Stuckness”

I recently started to read a most interesting blog, The Thesis Wisperer. While this blog is about doing a doctoral thesis, and my research is about researchers and the research process, it seems a natural fit.

This became even more apparent when I read their newest post, Why you might be ‘stuck.’ This post is about threshold concepts, a topic I have been studying especially intensely recently, that comes from the work of Meyer and Land. Not much to really add to this right now, as I am saving all that for my own research findings. On an even larger note, as I am narrowing down my doctoral research questions, let’s just leave stuckness alone, at least for the time being!

Let’s just say that I envision this being a most important framework for my thesis proposal, whose idea is due to be submitted for review within 2 weeks at Lancaster University. Back to my research . . .