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Due to a change in higher education and adult education ideas and practices globally that have become more learner-centered, higher education is undergoing a transformation at a rate never before seen. Education has also evolved into a lifetime endeavor as the importance of higher education and adult learning has grown. In light of the fact that it offers guidance on how people can find purpose in their lives, transformative learning theory has a prominent position in higher education and adult education. By critically examining their presumptions and expectations and updating them to support higher education students' successful learning, educators can transform their theory and practice of instruction through active and transformative learning. Adapting to the changing capacities brought on by digitization, technological advancements, growing technological connectivity, global market expansion, mobility and migration, and workplace diversity is becoming more and more difficult for higher education institutions. The idea of active and transformative learning and transformative learning strategies are discussed in detail in this chapter to help readers understand their importance and function in effective teaching and learning in the transforming world of higher education. This chapter's major contribution to Active and Transformative Learning: Digital Transformation in Education is the provision of a comprehensive guide and strategy on how to successfully incorporate digital technologies into the teaching and learning process in order to improve student engagement, knowledge acquisition, and the growth of critical thinking skills.

Mezirow's theory of transformative learning aims to evoke change on a deeper level of learning. This qualitative study with 38 pre-service teachers enrolled in a Master's degree programme for teacher education in Austria used semi-structured interviews to explore how diversity skills can transform after diversity training applying Mezirow's theory of transformative learning. In these trainings, a disorienting dilemma was placed at the centre of the diversity training from which transformative learning took its start.

In an increasingly diversified school system, diversity skills have become a pedagogical necessity for teachers in their future workplace. However, many teachers state not feeling adequately prepared for diversity within higher education and their attitudes towards diversity oftentimes remain unchanged despite diversity training.

The findings were deduced from structured content analysis. They show that the diversity trainings led to new cultural frames of reference for the study participants on a cognitive and social level, but to a smaller extent on an emotional level.

The study follows a different approach than “typical” diversity trainings through Mezirow's theory on transformative learning contributing to making a real change to preparing students for their workplaces in diversified Austrian schools.

This chapter explains how the Social Change Model of Leadership served as the process for uniting the campus on Cabrini Day around one shared vision of Leadership for Social Change. It also uses Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning to examine the resulting transformation that occurred among students engaged in this process.

In an effort to showcase students’ transformation into leaders for social change, the chapter focuses expressly on students enrolled in one particular course. These students worked together to develop a live simulation for Cabrini Day that brought campus community members through the real-world experiences of unaccompanied immigrant minors fleeing to the United States to escape violence in their home countries. The chapter employs an action research methodology to describe how, when, and why these students became transformed. Students’ planning steps, actions within the live simulation event, and reflections on their actions were analyzed using the individual, group, and community values of the Social Change Model, as well as the tenets of transformative learning theory.

Findings reveal that the Social Change Model is a viable process for integrating curricular and cocurricular endeavors on campus. Findings also show that this process can lead to transformative student learning outcomes.

Integrating curricular and cocurricular experiences on college campuses can lead to significant student learning outcomes and experiences.

In the field of global leadership, much of the research has focused on uncovering competencies and methods for assessing competencies. The process of developing global leaders has been researched less frequently; however, it is widely accepted that this process involves learning on the part of the leader. Mezirow’s (1978, 1991) transformative learning is a special type of learning in the domain of adult education and a useful lens to better understand the disorienting triggers that are thought to induce global leadership development (GLD). In simple terms, a disorienting experience occurs when we discover that something we thought was certain is now uncertain. Conducting business in another country or merely navigating to a grocery store or restaurant there can be a disorienting experience. In these situations, people are exposed to new information that does not fit their current meaning structures or thought paradigms, and at this juncture, people have a choice: to transform their perspective or remain unchanged. When individuals transform their perspective, they are experiencing transformative learning. The first section of this chapter reviews the concept of disorienting experiences across disciplines and within the domain of learning and education. The second section explains three GLD process models with a special focus on the role played by disorienting trigger events in each one. The final section explains the Disorientation Index (Ensign, 2019), which articulates dimensions of trigger events. The chapter concludes with future research directions and practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a case study of an action research project in the context of a secondary school in Kazakhstan where, for the first time in their teaching practice, three English as a Foreign Language teachers introduced student voice (Flutter and Rudduck, 2004) into their practice within the Lesson Study (LS) framework. The research aimed at conceptualizing Student Voice Space in LS as one of the valuable factors capable of triggering situations of disjuncture (disorienting dilemma, disruption) for teachers which could potentially lead to teacher’s transformative learning, educational beliefs change and improved practice.

The study adopts the qualitative research design and follows narrative inquiry methodology (Lyons and LaBoskey, 2002) with a series of narrative interviews (Bauer, 1996) as the main method of data collection within a single case study (Bassey, 1999) of an action research project. The data were analyzed as text following a general inductive approach (Thomas, 2003) where emerging themes were identified by means of data reduction.

The findings suggest that listening to student voice triggers teachers’ going through certain stages of Mezirow’s transformative learning theory including critical assessment of own assumptions, testing new options for behavior and reflecting critically on the teaching practice. Therefore, the authors suggest that Student Voice Space in LS is one of the important factors capable of triggering the teacher’s transformative learning. Moreover, it has an enormous potential not only to bring about positive changes in teachers’ practice but also challenge the ossified teachers’ educational beliefs, and thus, potentially, pave the way for a gradual change from “inappropriate beliefs” (Mayrhofer, 2019), or subconscious assumptions that lie in the core of teachers’ folk pedagogies (Torff, 1999), or taken-for-granted frames of reference (Mezirow, 2000) into true, justified or informed educational beliefs.

Further analysis of teachers’ narratives is required to elicit and categorize reported changes (shifts, transformations) concerning specific teachers’ educational beliefs, and draw a more clear line between student voice and its impact on the research lesson planning and its modification in LS. Finally, a supplementary study utilizing classroom observation methods is needed to explore if student voice intervention results in tangible (actual) changes in teachers’ classroom practice and educational beliefs, rather than potential transformations that are mainly reported in this study.

Carried out in the largely overlooked by the academic literature context of the Reform at Scale (Wilson et al., 2013) in Kazakhstan and building on the original combination of theoretical lenses, the research contributes to the academic literature aiming at illuminating “the black box of teachers’ learning” in Lesson Study (in Widjaja et al., 2017, p.358) since it is one of the rare studies attempting to connect teacher learning, student voice and Lesson Study (Warwick et al., 2019). Additionally, approaching teacher learning in Lesson Study from the transformative learning perspective combined with the literature on teachers’ educational beliefs and student voice, this study contributes to the further development of a shared vocabulary for discussing teacher learning in Lesson Study.

It is argued that social learning, transformative learning, collaborative learning and transgressive learning are branches and offshoots of the same ‘learning tree’. This chapter examines the sources and evolution of theories of education and learning focused on transforming the learners' self-understanding and transforming the structures and social arrangements in which they and their educational and learning processes are embedded. The ‘transformative learning’ theories reviewed here span the last 50 years. They critique and go beyond the functionalist understanding that education and learning are meant to socialize learners within existing or dominant cultural and societal structures and/or in function of the transmission of knowledge, skills and attitudes from generation to generation. The first part of this article covers transformative learning and learning for transformation in the tradition of Freire, Habermas, Mezirow, and others. The second part concentrates on more recent ideas of collaborative learning, social learning and deliberative social learning evolving into transformative, and transgressive learning. By highlighting the warp and weft of the conceptual traditions and pedagogical practice within a variety of contexts and conditions, a colourful tapestry of transformative education and learning emerges. It is shown that, over time, the pertinence of transformative learning has only increased. The evolution of transformative learning presents itself as a virtual cycle, starting from marginalized and excluded people and communities via individual persons engaged in adult education and environmental education, to (groups of) people participating in collaborative and transgressive social learning, thereby becoming capable and empowered actors in processes of societal change and transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the experience of three formerly abrasive leaders who improved their conduct and management strategies following a workplace intervention.

Narrative inquiry, a personal and collaborative research method, revealed the experience of three leaders in their shift from destructive behaviors. Concepts from adult development, specifically Kegan's constructive-development theory (CDT) and Mezirow's transformative learning theory (TL), provided a lens to better understand the leaders' personal development.

This study culminated with three co-composed narrative accounts and an analysis of narrative threads. The focus of this paper is the interpretive narrative thread analysis. The developmental experience of these three leaders included disruption, awakening and equipping.

This study included three leaders. The experience of these leaders may not be representative of other formerly abrasive leaders.

This initial exploratory study contributes to CDT and TL by suggesting leader interpersonal development is an intensely emotional experience that transcends the mechanics of developmental stages. In practice, this study indicates abrasive leaders may improve their conduct and management strategies with organizational support, including supervisor intervention and specialized professionals.

This paper offers insight for scholars and human resource (HR) professionals on the emotionally intense experiential journey of leaders who improved their interpersonal conduct. This study introduces concepts from CDT and TL into the study of workplace psychological aggression (WPA), and it expands the limited knowledge of how HR can support positive perpetrator change.

While the need to improve teacher preparation in response to linguistic and cultural diversity has been widely acknowledged, the learning process of teacher educators has not been widely discussed. This chapter presents findings from a self-study that examined practices aimed at preparing preservice teachers for linguistically and culturally diverse contexts through transformative intercultural learning. It exemplifies how Mezirow’s transformative learning theory can be put into practice by helping teacher educators reflect on their belief systems and practices. The findings show that disorienting dilemmas might challenge the validity of assumptions and lead to perspective transformation. It is evident that both teacher education process and intercultural learning share common ground in transformative learning. As researchers and educators continue to explore this relationship, particularly though self-study, it will lead to many insights about educational practice that is critical in a time of increasing diversity locally and possibilities for teaching and learning globally.

This chapter reports on a study of the benefits of the Integrated Education in Agricultural Entrepreneurship (IEAE). IEAE substantially covers the transfer of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will allow in each farmer-learner to plan, to launch, and to manage his/her own business and it should be approached from leadership perspective and as a life-long learning process. Entrepreneurship constitutes an important factor that determines the level of economic growth, competitiveness, employment, and social prosperity of a small country such as Greece (Spanoudaki, 2008). For purposes of this chapter agricultural entrepreneurship is defined as an effort developed individually or collectively for the exploitation of resources that the individual or the team allocates for the production of useful agricultural products, services, or goods connected with the production of agricultural products and their distribution in the market, satisfying market needs. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (Bosma & Levie, 2010), entrepreneurship is conceptualized as each effort for building a new business or a new activity, such as the free profession, where the creation of a new business, or the extension of an existing one, is done by an individual or by teams of individuals, from public institutions or from established private businesses.

The purpose of this self-study is to examine how transformative leadership in student organizations contributes to doctoral students’ professional development in higher education. Drawing from Mezirow’s (1997) notion of transformative learning and Bass’s (1990) theory of transformational leadership, the researchers discuss how an academic student organization, Alpha Upsilon Alpha, provided opportunities for transformative leadership in scholarship and service thus crafted academic identities and re-envisioned student organizations as spaces of transformative professional development.