Chapter 8: Transformative Learning Within Cultural Spaces: Transformative Experience Interventions Through the Lens of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Motivated by concerns that school learning is often non-transformative, Pugh and colleagues (e.g., Pugh, 2011; Wong, Pugh, & the Dewey Ideas Group at Michigan State University, 2001) developed transformative experience (TE) theory. This theory defines transformative experience as a particular kind of learning in which students use in-school learning to see and experience the world differently outside of school and value doing so. A TE is defined by three interrelated characteristics: (a) motivated use (i.e., application of in-school learning when not required to do so), (b) expansion of perception (i.e., seeing objects, events, or issues through the lens of school-learned content), and (c) experiential value (i.e., coming to value the content for how it expands perception and developing a deep appreciation for those parts of the world that are “re-seeing” through the lens of the content). For example, after a weather unit, a middle school student commented,