This weekend I started another book on Ignatian spirituality: What is Ignatian Spirituality? Am reading this book on my new Kindle, which is a little different in terms of spiritual readling. Am early into the reading, but wanted to share a couple ideas here related to the heart and transformative learning. We have seen a lot recently written about the heart in transformative learning but I wonder how thoughtful and critical we are being about the use of the idea of heart.

'"Heart' does not mean the emotions (though it includes our emotions). It refers to our inner orientation, the core of our being." And again, later in the book, the author states Ignatius had a "profound conversation while recuperating from his wounds, but it was not a conversion of the intellect or will...His conversion involved his deepest desires and commitments, that essential center of the personally in which man stands before God. His religious practice and intellectual understanding deepened over time, but it was his heart that was transformed."

"The goal (of Ignatian spiritual practice) is a response of the heart, which truly changes the whole person. "

As I continue to read about Ignatian spirituality, it strikes me how much of the language and concepts used parallel some of the ideas Jung explored in his own work.

Fooling around on the web this morning, I discovered a PDF titled, "Transformative Education in the Jesuit Tradition." Earlier this month I had ordered a book from Amazon.com titled, An Ignatian Spirituality Reader, edited by George Traub, a Jesuit Professor of Theology at Xavier University. This PDF provides what is essentially an overview to the philosophical orientation at Loyola University in Chicago. However, there is a section within this document that describes what is called the "Ignatian Methodology." Here transformative education is described as a method that aims at fostering a series of "internal transformations" on the part of the students and "how the go about understanding themselves vis-a-vis their own inclinations, passions, biases, and spontaneous reactions." The emphasis is on discernment.

The method stresses self-transcendence as an "antidote to self-immersion." Four steps are outlined: 1) Become attentive to what one is experiencing; 2) Reflect back on one's experiences and what has been evoked by way of questions that comes out of that experience' 3) Make a judgment as to what is or what one has come to know or not know; and 4) Determine the course of action called for by this judgment.

As I read this overview, it strikes me there is much overlap between what is discussed here in terms of the approach to learning and what is discussed as transformative learning in higher and adult education. It has the cognitive flavor and quality that is present in Mezirow's approach to transformative learning but the goal of self-knowing and self-transcendence that is more characteristic of Jung's approach to transformation.

Scientists apparently have discovered another planet three times the size of Earth, located about 40 some light years away, revolving around a single sun. They think it is a mass of water with a surface temperature of about 400 degrees F.

For some reason, this factoid made me think about the existence of a god, or whether we are just circumstances of historical fate. Seems to matter somehow but not sure in what way.

A journey in progress

Am beginning this blog to think aloud, so to speak, on matters of teaching and learning in higher and adult education. Lots of ideas are swirling around, emanating from lots of different sources, including students, my role as editor of the Journal of Transformative Education, and my own writing and research in this area. A blog seems like a good avenue to begin exploring some of these issues in more depth.

Part of what I have encountered in my role as editor is the question of scope - what is included and not included in the ideas of transformative learning and transformative education? Is transformative learning limited to adults or is such learning possible among, high school or even elementary students?