Transformative Learning

Tom was invite to join Embercomb’s delegation to the inaugural Changemaker Festival of the International Partnership for Transformative Learning (IPTL) — the culmination of a 2-year EU funded learning partnership between 8 organisations all hosting entirely distinct transformational learning programmes (see box 1). As things turned out they didn’t get Tom, instead I wrangled my way in under the guise of research for On Purpose’s learning and development review.

Box 1: IPTL membersYouth Initiative Programme (YIP, Sweden) ‎
Art Monastery Project (Italy)
Knowmads (Netherlands)
Pioneers of Change (Austria) ‎
Embercombe (UK) ‎
Society for Organisational Learning (Hungary) ‎
Edventure: Frome (UK) ‎
Visionauts (Germany) ‎
I entered this festive cauldron seeking answers to a set of questions for each of the organisations represented. I was clear I wanted to understand the process these programmes take their participants through in order to develop more complete learners, and in some cases leaders. It was also important to gain a sense of how they construct a narrative over the course of a programme so that participants can realise the accumulative and interconnected nature of their learning and development.

It was all too apparent from the opening ceremony that this agenda rather set me at odds with those collected, who declared intentions far more aligned to personal -discovery, -development, and –fulfillment. Perhaps at this point I should come clean as to the whereabouts of this festival. Jarna is Sweden’s ‘alternative’ centre. It was the setting for much of the social reformer, Rudolf Steiner’s, Anthroposophical theorising.

It wasn’t until day 5 that I felt the slightest vindication at having persisted in trawling through my interview guides amid the buzz of massage orgies, the serenity of puppy dog meditations, and the hum of collective silence on various fjord protruding rocks. In my polite awkward English way I’d persisted at trying to participate. But, it was during the briefing for the combative throat arrow breaking, and fire walking that the all too true words rang out: ‘we live in an age where, more than ever, it’s not sensible to do something just because everyone else does’.

As it turned out, I didn’t take advantage of this no-shame opt-out. Subsequently I splintered the arrow using just the nook of my throat, and I walked through the amateurish 500oC birch embers. But, I was mindful to only attempt these acts urged on by personal intrigue, as opposed to being swept-along by the chanting or the relay of tranced toes.

Is it not ironic then, that in some regards, a swarm is precisely what the ‘new paradigm’ (see note) seeks to achieve in order to tip from being a fad into the mainstream? Simply understood, a herd is about having a clear collective need and longing that the members hold as being essentially important. The strength of a herd is found in its ability to self-organise its diversity of knowledge, and allow for indirect cooperation.

It was through this interplay of insisting on being individual, whilst needing to be part of a movement, that I was coaxed into having my own transformative learning experience: going in in one direction, and coming out in quite another. I was able to experience what I enable and limit thanks to being tested, call-out, cajoled, and buoyed by the camaraderie of peers.

So, come the end of the week, I’m sure I ticked the boxes I arrived with an agenda to fill; I certainly collated many notes. But the value came from being cast out onto the edge, where, given the right surroundings I was challenged to develop a personal knowledge, and I was expected to teach myself.

I’m confident this deviant experience will have done the learning and development review the world of good. My proposals are now set to be informed by empirical research in its fullest sense. They will relay as much about: the importance of knowledge, and rigour, and theoretical best practice, as they will about; an individual’s responsibility to (self) learning, and how vital it is to provide an environment that can handle frustration, because it’s this that creates an urge for change and drives people to take personal action.

Note: the shorthand used to accommodate the myriad of learning transformations the core organisations sought to achieve through their programmes