Ways of Learning
What do we mean by 'transformative learning'?
The term ‘transformative learning’ (or TL) has become a buzzword in some circles through the last decade. As a result, it can mean quite different things to different people. Yet, there has also developed since the 1970s a strong foundation of theory, inquiry, and research into what makes learning transformative, and how TL can be most helpful to people who are trying to grow & change.
Essentially, TL has been described as a uniquely human form of learning, in which the major dilemmas that confound us at points in our lives become catalysts – not just for problem-solving or adaptation – but for a fundamental reexamination of our core attitudes, beliefs, and commitments. This process requires us to reconstruct the ways we derive meaning from our experiences, thereby creating durable changes in our perspectives on ourselves, other people, and life itself.
At the Leaning Shire, we approach this form of learning with a conviction that no absolute line separates the teaching arts from the healing arts. This is not a position all educators would agree on, or be comfortable with taking, yet we believe it’s worthwhile when undertaking to teach for purposes of transformation. If an experience is to become transformative, it must take us beyond the borders of what we find familiar or comfortable in our daily lives. Transformation changes people in ways that are foundational & lasting, and this can be unsettling – even when the change is desired & helpful. Yet not all transformation is helpful, or easy to predict! Trauma is an example of transformation gone awry – where experience leads to a type of learning & change that hinders rather than helps a person, and requires intentional effort to undo the harm that’s been internalized.
Teachers & facilitators who draw on transformative approaches to learning therefore bear a significant responsibility for their instructional approaches, the environments they create, the interactive tools they employ, and the choices & level of control they make available to their learners. Patricia Webb, founder & lead facilitator at the Learning Shire, has spent much of her professional career working in the context of mental healthcare, health education, and mind-body healing modalities. She has developed an acute awareness of elements within a learning experience that may be felt as healing or as hurtful, as transformative or as traumatic, by different people under different conditions.
Patricia has found that allowing people to maintain an active & collaborative level of control over their learning experience is key to providing transformative learning that’s helpful to a wide variety of people in workshop contexts. By encouraging participants to a have significant voice in their own learning process, Learning Shire programs not only affirm people in creating physical & psychological boundaries, which can protect them from experiences they may find ‘too much’; these programs further affirm participants’ practice of relational skills that are central to the transformational process itself – skills like honest communication, sustained listening, reflective thinking, and compassionate negotiation of differences in needs or perspectives among participants.
Why do we use films in educational seminars?
Great stories, told through the rich, sensory medium of visual & performance art, open windows to the inner life where the wellsprings of energy, creativity, and our deepest commitments lay. In professional as in private life, learning that fails to tap these inner springs leads to outcomes that are shallow, transient, and ultimately ineffective.
Contemporary films are one of the most potent & portable tools for conveying great narrative art. Award-winning films engage us on many levels of experience, offering more than one dimension of meaning and suggesting multiple fruitful paths for exploration & action. As we seek to understand the characters in these stories, we find ourselves on a path that forges connections between the story’s reality and our own … challenging us to reconsider some of our own attitudes & beliefs, and helping us to recognize the hope all great stories inspire – that every person can & does make a difference in their world.
Why do we use horses in educational programs?
Horses are one of the most ancient & intelligent prey species on the earth, with an evolutionary & social history of 45- to 55-million years – and a history of at least 6- to 8-thousand years in demonstrated willingness & ability to partner creatively with humans. This is second only to the history of partnership between humans & domesticated wolves, or dogs.
Biologically, horses are flight animals – vegetative feeders who constantly scan their environment for sources of danger, and are ever-ready to flee in response to perceived threats. This prey consciousness equips them to be astute observers of non-verbal behavior among potential predators, and horses possess a particularly expert awareness of actions that are incongruent – those which send inconsistent or conflicting messages. Consequently, horses provide invaluable feedback about people’s non-verbal ways of communicating, as well as about incongruities of thought, feeling, and action that people frequently convey.
From the human point-of-view, horses themselves may represent a source of danger, simply by virtue of their size – ranging as they do from 1000 to 2000 pounds, and standing taller than most people at eye-level. While some may admire horses from afar, relatively few adults spend time with them routinely. This lack of familiarity, combined with the potential threat many people feel up-close, creates conditions by which horses commonly elicit the human fight-or-flight drama, in which our predator’s ‘fight’ and our prey creature’s ‘flight’ responses both contend internally with our higher mental capacities for logical reasoning, problem-solving, communication, intuition, and cooperation.
Horse-human relationships therefore present an ideal context for people to engage with and re-evaluate their own feelings, interpretations, and assessments of others, as well as to explore new responses and possibilities for action. Human-equine assisted learning or H-EALING® at the Learning Shire draws on these dynamics of horse-human relations safely, through interactions on the ground that require no prior horse experience, and options for either no riding, or limited riding with ample assistance.
The life’s work of legendary teacher & trainer Monty Roberts has gone furthest to-date in exploring, articulating, and demonstrating the possibilities for communicative relationship between horses & people, along with the profound transformative dynamics available to those who engage in nonviolent relations with horses. Roberts’ decades of work, together with that of his student Koelle Simpson, provides the philosophical & experiential foundation for the Learning Shire’s approach to human-equine assisted learning, or H-EALING®.