Transformative Learning Through Engagement

Reviews / Votes

"In Transformative Learning Through Engagement, Jane Fried and Associates provide convincing evidence that transformative learning is a crucial but undervalued aspect of university and college education. The book focuses on the role of student affairs professionals (also referred to as student services in Canada) in supporting transformative learning within a U.S. context, but it offers valuable insights about learning that are of importance to anyone involved in higher education. In drawing upon recent scholarship about the science of learning and behavioural change, this book underlines the value of creating integrated learning environments that educate the head, heart, and hands of students, thus better enabling them to engage with and adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Fried and Associates present a strong case outlining how educational institutions urgently need to change in order to enable students to develop the knowledge and tools needed to become actively engaged citizens within a changing global context. Society is increasingly diverse and undergoing rapid social, cultural, economic, and environmental changes. New and complex issues that cross disciplinary boundaries require more integrated and collaborative approaches to problem solving. To that end, Fried asserts that universities and colleges need to break down structural and functional barriers in order to better support students in achieving transformative and integrated learning. This book will enable student affairs professionals and others involved in higher education to understand their roles in adapting to new educational realities."

Canadian Journal of University Continuing Education

"This book examines the important role student affairs professionals can and should play in teaching and learning. As colleges and universities adapt to the new realitites of higher education (including new understandings about how people learn), student affairs professionals can provide experiential learning opportunities that help students cross inter- and intrapersonal borders. With discussions of dominant paradigms and cultures within US contexts and examples of a range of campus applications, the book provides a framework for thinking about student affairs as key to college learning, particularly in areas related to diversity. It is a useful tool for student affairs professionals working to contribute to the educational missions of the twenty-first century."

Diversity & Democracy

"Considers the role of student-affairs professionals in helping students learn."

The Chronicle of Higher Ed

"Jane Fried delivers an incisive critique of the obsolete yet persistent assumptions, structures, and measures pervading higher education. Invoking recent scholarship about the science of learning, she debunks dualistic and linear ideas about where and how learning and development happens. Fried is compassionate, but with blistering urgency, guiding Student Affairs educators past our insecurities as teachers, broadening the learning environment and reconciling our capacity for integrative approaches in pursuit of knowledge, vocation, and democratic community."

Jason Laker, Professor, Department of Counselor Education, San Jose State University

"Fried's suggestions that [student affairs professionals and subject experts] should work closely together...may have merit. It is consistent with our knowledge of learning and it confronts a real and growing challenge. True, it is daunting (and thus brave) but we should take it seriously. We may encounter those old enemies inertia, habit, and attitude, but let's hope that the need for serious change, so strongly supported by Fried, brings it to the attention of energized and creative professionals in higher education-both academics and administrators."

James E. Zull

"Anyone who selects education as a career will find this book both illuminating and affirming. Examples of the roles student affairs can play in helping to structure integrated learning and Jane Fried's practical and in-depth explanation of how learning occurs make this book an excellent primer for new professionals and an essential reference book for all others. It confirms the assertion upon which the popular Learning Reconsidered is based: 'The most important factor is that transformative learning always occurs in the active context of students' lives.' Teaching from the perspective of what one learns from this book, especially about diversity and citizenship, will help educators eliminate the one question that every student has asked at some time: 'Why do I have to take this course?' This book is a winner!"

Gwen Dungy, Executive Director, NASPA

"For those of us desiring a pathway that offers an education to students that is holistic and integrated, we now have a book to guide our thinking and action. This book focuses on educating the head, heart, and hands of our students, particularly on how student affairs professionals can become partners with faculty as teachers, providing integrated experiences and interventions in the lives of students that will foster their holistic and integrated learning and development."

Larry A. Braskamp

Professor Emeritus at Loyola University Chicago and Senior Fellow at the American Association of Colleges and Universities