Because they are really pressing issues, which the world is facing today. If we think about the traditional role of higher education, when it first began, it was very socially engaged. In fact, the early universities really grew from the need from the church to actually engage in society and the role of the universities reflected that. Overtime, I think universities have become more removed from society and gradually have been involved in a production of knowledge, which tends to objectify reality. In fact, the multiple realities of the world are very complex. So it is very hard to see how that kind of learning, based on a belief in an objective truth, really can be maintained within many higher education systems at the moment when we see so many challenges facing people: of  living in multicultural contexts or in contexts where there is violence and conflict; where they are trying to understand much better their relationship with wider society and with the state, and are thinking how they can engage in acting on the problems and the challenges that they face on a daily basis, either individually or collectively.

 

My  reason for wanting to see an integration of those ideas in the curricula of universities is to enable people to learn in a way that is different from simply being passive recipients of preformed ideas. For me, education is about learning and learning is about change. So where we see the need for social change, for human and social development, which really is rooted in issues of rights, power and voice of people, then I think it is absolutely necessary for higher education to actually build the curricula upon these issues, not just to add them but actually to integrate them and use them as foundations for learning and teaching.

 

 

 

For some people it could just mean simply a change, perhaps an acquisition of knowledge, to learn something, to build, to do something differently. From our understanding of transformation, we are really thinking about how people understand their identity in the world, and how they are actually able to stand back from their reality to see themselves in relation to other people, to society and to the environment. Once you have the capacity to reflect on who you are, and how you relate to the world, then you have the possibility to make different choices about your actions. So, transformation of learning is where your vision and understanding of the world is transformed. You can really see the world with different eyes and then  see the possibility to act in different ways.

 

 

 

Again it’s challenging, because a lot of educative curricula, especially in higher education, are still based on the idea of transmission of knowledge. In fact it is what Paulo Freire called “banking”, and it is still very common that university teachers provide information, that is to say, the idea of transferring knowledge from the expert to the passive recipient. For transformative education to take place there really needs to be a much more experiential form of learning, for people to actually engage in processes of change, to try things out from themselves, to address real world problems, and to realize that not all solutions can be found easily. And it’s when you start to ask the hard questions and grapple with some intractable problems that you begin, perhaps, to open up opportunities to learn in a different way.  

 

 

 

I think teachers have to, almost, relearn the pedagogical approaches. Even if we think about dialogue as a conversation, we should not escape from the fact that there are many power relationships that influence the relationship between teachers and students. If teachers engage with students in conversation, unless both sides are aware of the expectations, and of the power relations experienced, it can be very difficult for that conversation to be based really on an equitable basis. Often, the students think of the teacher still as an expert, and the teacher still thinks of him or herself as an expert and that the students’ role is to learn from the teacher. Therefore, that dialogue has to be based really on a reshaping and a relearning of power relations and awareness of what that means in practice.

 

 

 

Rather than thinking about teaching, many people, who I feel understand transformation well, often talk about facilitation of learning. That means introducing processes within the learning and teaching dynamic, which really support a collective addressing of problems. For example, if students were to go into a community, and actually engage with people in the community around a particular  problem that is raised by people in that community, then they are likely to question themselves and each other, and understand really that the solutions do not come necessarily from “expert” external sources. So in this case, as an example, the process could encourage students to think about the language they use, how they refer to other people, how they see themselves, and creating opportunities for reflection on experience. Our aim then is to enable people to learn by engaging with different kinds of knowledge, things which actually touch the senses, not only just intellectual processes - activities such as role playing, simulations, games, creative writing, arts, drama, poetry, music… The opportunities are to develop, to construct knowledge from the experience through a process of critical reflection.    

 

 

 

It is very difficult to say if one book will really make an impact, but there is a cross fertilization which is taking place in this book, where ideas are coming together in different and novel ways. The contributors to the book are from a range of different backgrounds with different kinds of experiences. Many are not from the traditional field of higher education research. We have people with a civil society background, people who come from processes of community organizing, institutional change and organisational development, as well as perhaps the more traditional forms of higher education and the acknowledged members of that field. I hope that those who read it will see the world a little bit differently as a result. Perhaps it will cause readers to consider again some of the solutions that we often come with very readily when we aim to address issues of social injustice, or attempt to include the voices of people who are not usually heard. Sometimes we use targets, goals and objectives which seem straight forward, but in fact are much more complex, much more uncertain. One of the lessons I would like people to take from this is that we are living in a very uncertain world, and we need to bring together and value different kinds of knowledge from people at the local level, and to appreciate the ways in which these knowledges can interact and intersect with global forms of knowledge. This has implications for policy makers and institutional leaders, for teachers and for people who work in civil society, and in community and social change processes. I hope they will find this of interest and help them to reshape the way they see and act in the world.