ABSTRACT
No account of adult learning would be complete without reference to transformative learning. Many commentators have noted the resilience and continuing interest in transformative learning in the adult education literature. The role of the adult educator is to assist learners to analyse their experiences to achieve liberation from psychological repression and/or social and political oppression. In this way ‘conscientisation’ leads to a critical awareness of the self as a subject who can reflect and act upon the world in order to transform it. This chapter explores the tension between a pedagogy based on a relative and ‘relational’ view of the self, and one based on a view of a self which has the potential to be authentic under certain political and economic conditions. The narrative approach to understanding development and change has much in common with existing practices in transformative learning, especially those associated with reflection on experience.
