Chapter 7: Experience of Transformation: Educator Perspectives

This chapter is conceptualized to illuminate an alternative way of thinking about education, as a transformative pedagogy where engaging in self-critical inquiry is the conduit to authentic, reciprocal learning relationships necessary for knowledge acquisition. As educators, the concept of transformation, is shaped within the sociohistorical context of the public school system where it is negotiated much like “the concept of justice is a negotiated concept that depends on the representative viewpoints” (Willie & Willie, 2005, p. 475). For example, historically, education in the United States transformed dramatically over the last 100 years from a sporadic, mobile array of schoolhouses, established within small communities (Drennon, 2006), to mandatory school attendance for all children established through compulsory attendance laws (Katz, 1976). However, since this historic transformation to legally require inclusive educational opportunity, an exclusive societal negotiation of educational purpose, accessibility, equity, oversight, socialization, and intellectual development, has brought about new waves of school transformation. Thus, for educators, the concept of transformation must first be deconstructed in the reality, of the influence of its sociohistorical context before it can be understood as a pedagogy informed by theory.