A Dialogical Reframing

Abstract

Laura Formenti: This special issue represents the culmination of a journey, which began with the introduction of transformative learning (TL) into Europe throughout the monumental task of establishing a network dedicated to TL within the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA). Both the authors represented in this issue and the editors played important roles in this journey. In this issue, we are offered four lenses to reflect on TL and possibly reframe it. Of course, the articles were written separately, but now they are connected in the same place and our conversation can start a dialogue. These four pieces can serve to further this reflection and dialogue on what we mean by TL, how it differs from what Michael Newman (2012) refers to as ‘‘good learning,’’ and how it might be fostered within formal educational practices as well as within the informal contexts of our daily lives. To begin this special issue, John Dirkx and I would like to engage in a transatlantic dialogue. After all, we are ‘‘researchers of difference’’ (Norris, & Sawyer, 2012), living on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, with different academic backgrounds and different languages. I am a newcomer in TL, and you are the editor of this journal. Difference is a powerful means for thinking and learning, ‘‘food for perception’’ (Bateson, 1979, p. 32), provided that we are able to transform it; and dialogue is the human way to transform meaning. TL is facing a new challenge, new differences, with a newly formed European Network that will ‘‘interrogate’’ it. So, I propose to you a conversation about this issue, its contents, and the possibilities of transformation that can be opened by dialogue.