Date of Graduation

1992

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

This heuristic, cross-cultural study explored how transformative teachers embody, nurture, and convey their pedagogical purposes in the classroom. Transformative teachers challenge the status quo in an area of personal importance, whether it be teacher-student relationships, teaching for social change, teaching for personal growth and meaning, or teaching beyond traditional academic standards. Participants included eight secondary and post-secondary teachers from North America and Lithuania. Because participants were selected through a student nomination process as being educators who inspired learners to change personal circumstances, join a political or social movement, or develop a purpose in life, they represented not only different academic areas, but they articulated multiple philosophical orientations and broad gender, political, social, and cultural perspectives. Following interview and journal exercises, a portrait of each participant was constructed giving focus to biography and to the effects of turning point experiences on the teacher's pedagogical life and purpose. Themes that emerged from the teachers' lives that illuminated the nature of transformative teaching included: the embodiment and conveyance of passionate interests and convictions in the classroom, the tendency to view reflection as a source of professional knowledge, the embodiment of a pedagogical intent toward learners, the ability to be genuinely present to learners, the tendency to balance passion for knowledge with compassion for learners, the recognition and conveyance of the subjective nature of truth and knowledge, and the tendency to encourage intuitive as well as rational understanding. The results of the study indicated support for viewing teachers as a rich source of knowledge about transformative teaching because their insights did not get entangled with theoretical jargon. Sharing from personal experience and perception, they operationalized what critical, liberatory, and feminist theorists have only advocated. In addition, the results indicated support for additional cross-cultural educational research. The contribution of the Lithuanian educators provided an explicit example of teaching for social change and a fresh, illuminating view of transformative pedagogy. Finally, the results of the study indicated support for re-examining teacher education programs in order to give more attention to nurturing and sustaining the transformative purposes persons bring to teaching.

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