Grasping others’ perspective is the key to transformative learning

It’s everywhere. You’ll see it namechecked in university strategic plans, library mission statements and learning outcomes for courses from anthropology to zoology. Even distinct university units have been created under its name. Step back, active learning. You had a good run, but this is the era of transformative learning.

In some ways, though, the idea that education should transform a student’s way of being in the world is nothing new; it has a history that extends back to Plato. But if we look beyond the hype, we’ll see that it isn’t all roses and sunshine; transformative learning poses significant ethical risks.

As the Yale University philosopher Laurie Paul notes in her philosophical treatment of transformative experience, not all transformations are good. A happy, well-adjusted individual can have an experience that spirals into addiction, poverty and depression. When we have a transformative learning experience, it is assumed it will lead to personal and intellectual growth, redefining our sense of self. But in his excellent 2021 book, The Transformative Classroom, the Leibniz University Hannover researcher Douglas Yacek highlights a number of ethical dangers connected to transformative education.

Some of these dangers stem from professors imposing beliefs onto students – whether consciously or unconsciously. A student may enter a philosophy class taught by a hardened materialist and be shamed out of their religious belief because of its obvious irrationality. Or a student’s intuitions either for or against universal basic income may be quashed by a learning environment that assumes an economic ideology. In such cases, there may be transformative learning, but the student isn’t the author of the transformative change. They aren’t working through problems to figure out what they think and how they should act.

Few would dispute that transformative learning is integral to a university education. Without it, learning would be reduced to filling up the storehouse of our minds with facts and theories. But if that storehouse is never renovated, our patterns of thinking will ossify. How, then, can we preserve what is positive about transformative learning while mitigating its ethical risks?

I submit that we can do this by considering another popular concept in teaching and learning: critical thinking. By locating transformative learning within an environment that prioritises students’ abilities to navigate the complexities of a problem to make up their own minds, we have a path forward.

But again, there’s a roadblock. Although the concept of critical thinking has been a useful framework for solving theoretical and practical problems, there is another side to it. In addition to solving problems, we need the skills to reveal problems that we previously didn’t recognise. The associated abilities and dispositions that most critical thinking researchers discuss – even reflection and open-mindedness – are largely geared towards solving problems that resolve states of doubt and not towards revealing new problems that arouse states of doubt.

Put in psychological terms, the mainstream concept of critical thinking doesn’t address the deep challenge of cognitive bias, including how confirmation bias and motivated reasoning distort the search, selection and interpretation of evidence. When students don’t have the tools to challenge their biases, they are likely to remain entrenched within their habituated patterns of thinking. Because overturning a belief that is central to our personal identity can be a distressing experience, it's much easier to defend our beliefs against objections. We need critical-thinking tools that can confront our cognitive biases head on and open the door to transformative learning.

In a recently published paper, I argue that perspective taking is the missing link. The ability to imagine another individual’s experience – to infer their feelings and thoughts and see an issue from their vantage point – is a foundational critical-thinking skill that can help to address the cognitive bias challenge. When we take on the perspective of another individual, particularly someone with a different background and worldview, we aren’t focused on rebutting their claims to keep our beliefs intact. Instead, our attention is focused on understanding their experience, which can broaden our horizons, spark a state of doubt and initiate a process of transformative learning.

I believe we should be redesigning university curricula by integrating more perspective-taking activities and assessments. In addition to advancing the intellectual and emotional development of individual students, perspective-taking promotes an inclusive learning environment, where differences in belief are better understood and respected.

In these divisive times, the need for such perspective taking has never been more urgent.

James Southworth teaches academic writing at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. This article is based on research recently published in Theory and Research in Education.