I understand transformative learning to be something that takes place at a time in our lives when what we have previously believed comes into question. Some event or discussion or type of learning happens where we tend to change the way we think, we let go of some of our discrimination and take hold of a more open view. I have a hard time thinking of examples where this has happened in my own life. Maybe I am still narrow minded, or maybe my definition of transformative learning is wrong.
One example I can think of is the way I view physicians. Early on in my nursing education, probably in my first semester I began with my view that all doctors were basically rude and condescending to nurses. As I went through school, and began working after graduation, these beliefs held true. They would yell for no reason, make you look like you didn't know what you were doing in front of patients, and act like they had never seen you if you passed them in the halls. I vowed that I would never work in the doctors office. My transformative learning did not come from a discussion, but more from several encounters. I knew a urologist fairly well from the hospital and applied for his nurse position because the office schedule worked better than the hospital schedule for school. After a few days in his clinic, he began talking to me like I was a person. Asked if I was doing anything over the weekend, talked about his family, and told jokes. These few experiences caused me to take a look at the way I viewed physicians. I realized they were human and put their pants on just like I did. I had to make a change in the way I viewed and talked to them. When I work at the hospital now, I find myself engaging the doctors in conversation, and in return they talk and acknowledge me in the halls.
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I think this is a great example, and one that undoubtedly affects a lot of us. We are all influenced by our experiences, and we pass judgment based on what happens to us in our lives --it's human nature. Since you'd had few positive experiences with physicians prior to starting your nursing degree, it makes total sense that you would have harbored some of those negative feelings. When you finally met a physician who was different, you realized that your previously held beliefs weren't accurate. You then changed your mental framework to account for this new revelation. You learned something, and it transformed your thinking (and behavior).
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who is a doctor. He didn’t want to go to medical school but his father wanted him to go there because the father and his brother were also a doctor. My friend used to be a person who enjoyed funny joking and considered others well. He was getting more sensitive. He was always tired and sometimes hysteric through an intern and a resident. While I was watching him changing, I realized how hard and tough a job of a doctor was. I came to understand that it was not easy to see sick people all day long.
ReplyDeleteSo I think that a doctor or a nurse should be people who were born as a doctor or a nurse such as they enjoy taking care of others or they also are happy when a patient is getting better.
Hi, Amanda,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your colleagues that the change in the way you view physicians (not all, maybe, but some) is a change in your perspective that allows you to be more open in your thinking. This is a good example of transformative learning, maybe not a perspective transformation, but, certainly, a transformed meaning scheme from "all doctors are rude" to "some doctors are human and treat nurses well."
For many of us, transformative learning comes in small bits and pieces, rather than large, overarching changes in our perspectives. Also, I think many changes in how we think and perceive accumulate as gradual change to meaning perspectives that occur over time. I wonder how many changes you will be able to recount at the end of this semester as changes in your thinking about adult learning, in general?