Even More on Transformational Learning

 From your perspectives from work and school and based on our readings what are the main aims of transformative learning moments? Are these moments always worthwhile?

When reading my classmates Anna's post I was thinking about the transformative learning moments I've experienced have all had one critical component . . . the disorienting dilemma. 

The first of ten phases of transformative learning that Mezirow observed, according to Clark, Merriman, and Sandlin (2011) is a disorienting dilemma followed by a self-examination with feelings of fear, anger, guilt, and shame. 

I wrote about the fatality a few weeks ago and discussed the transformation that the organization went through. Reading your post though, I'd love to know if anyone can tell me of the negative transformative learning moments that they've experienced. I can't think of any that weren't ultimately positive. Sure, there were rocky starts and rocky travels throughout, but ultimately the experiences were all positive. When you think of negative results from these moments, what have you experienced?

Our industry has several "golden rules" meaning that they are so hazardous that if you break these rules you are thrown off the site and usually lose your job. The problem is, let's take something like working at heights without the proper safety harness and safety equipment. This is something that could get a worker fired. 

HOWEVER, when my organization went through an investigation of a near miss, an accident that could have happened but didn't, we found that the team leader and the entire crew had not followed many of the proper procedures and violated several golden rules. As a training director, I felt incredibly responsible. These guys obviously hadn't been trained well. What was great was that our investigation focused on "fact finding" not "fault finding" so we were just trying to figure out what happened and retrain, not looking to let anyone go for a violation. 

After finding out all of their violations, and after retraining and telling that team all that could have gone wrong, I would bet they are all advocates of the proper way of doing the job. They would now become some of the best people to help enforce the standard and train the next team to do it. I can just imagine one of them saying to a new guy "you don't want to do it like that . . . if you do you'll have to be on a call with corporate with the training guy and it's no fun at all. You need to do it right." 

To put it more simply, I think this idea of not allowing people to make and learn from mistakes is a problem. There's no advocacy, no learning from mistakes, and those can be some of the best features of learning. 

Reference

Clark, M. C., Merriam, S. B., Sandlin, J. A. (2011). The relationship between adult learning and development; Challenging normative assumptions. In Hoare, C. (Ed.), The oxford handbook of reciprocal adult development and learning (pp. 17 - 38).