Transformative Learning and Ministerial Education in the Church of England—Some Examples of Appropriate Ways of Engaging the Public Realm in the Context of Late Modernity

Abstract

AbstractIn order to resist the increasing privatization of religion and the tendency of the dominant socio-political system to value power, wealth and the acquisition of competitive competence above concerns about poverty and injustice, ministerial training needs to engage more critically with the public realm. Transformative learning not only provides an appropriate means of connecting the agenda of the Christian faith tradition with subject areas which help us make sense of late modernity but also ensures that sufficient weight is given to the affective and behavioural domains of learning. As the Church of England considers the future structure and funding of ordination training, examples of transformative learning from several training institutions are outlined. After a brief description of the Liverpool OLM course and the technique used to evaluate it, the article concludes with some of the words of the participants on the Liverpool course showing how they were changed from an individualistic and comp...