Essay: Transformative Learning Theory / Experiential Learning Theory

My vision to the mission
Our mission states, “To provide an exceptional, student-centered education that prepares students to contribute to the regional, national, and global society. This will be achieved by enhancing the academic excellence and experience of our students while operating with sound and efficient fiscal and governance practices.”
With the rapid growth and expansion of the university, I will be outlining a vision to unify our university mission with each department so that we can continue to offer the best education to students.  I will discuss the collegial administration and governance as well as transformational, experiential, and developmental theories as foundations.
Transformative Learning Theory
The Transformative Learning Theory was introduced by Jack Mezirow in 1978.  The theory states “learning is understood as the process of using a prior interpretation to construe a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of one’s experience in order to guide future action” (Mezirow, 1996, p. 162). In lay terms, it describes how people develop and use critical self-reflecting to consider their beliefs and experiences, and over time, change how they see the world.  There are four main components in transformative learning:  experience, critical reflection, reflective discourse, and action.  These four components include ten steps, or phases.
To being transformational learning, one must experience a disorienting dilemma.  Students can experience a dilemma at any stage of their college career from as soon as moving in to senior year.  Some examples of a disorienting dilemma can be learning racism still exists, other individuals come from low-income households or vice versa, some students may never had a permanent home growing up, some students still go hungry every day, etc.  It is a dilemma that makes the student see something different that is not in their pre-existing knowledge.  Once the student experiences this dilemma, they move on to the next step of critical reflection.
After the student experiences the dilemma, they will begin to reflect critically by self-examining with feelings of guilt or shame.  An example would be that they did not know racism still existed and it bothers them they did not know.  They will feel shameful or guilt that they have not been able to help the issue or step in to make things better.  This will lead to a critical assessment of epistemic, sociocultural, or psychic assumptions.
The student will then move into reflective discourse.  It will begin with recognition that one’s discontent and the process of transformation are shared and that others have negotiated a similar change and then exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and actions.  Following the reflection of the student, they will then begin a course of action.  This is done by acquisition of knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plan with a provision trying of new roles and building of competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships.  Finally, the student will reintegrate into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s perspective.
Building off Mezirow, Edward Taylor developed seven lenses focusing on individual and sociocultural.  In the individual lenses, he uses psycho-critical theory of adult learning by Mezirow, psycho-developmental approach by Laurent Daloz which focuses on intuitive nature, and psycho-analytic approach by Robert Boyd that shows the importance of symbols.  In the sociocultural lenses, social emancipatory by Paulo Freire which focuses on emerging context of poverty and oppression, cultural-spiritual by Elizabeth Tisdell which is the socially constructed personality of individuals and their knowledge through storytelling, race centric by Sheared through daily conscious strategy, and planetary by Edmond O’Sullivan with inter connectedness through natural environment.
Not only do the students go through transformative learning, it is our duty as administrators to be open to this type of learning as well.  While we all may not agree on certain issues, we must take into account each other’s perspectives and see if we can go through our own transformative learning with new information provided to us.
Experiential Learning Theory
Experiential learning is described as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb 1984, p. 41).  The focus is on the learners’ meaning-making processes as the result of an experience.  Learning must happen with connections to the experience to those in the past as well as in the future.  This process is portrayed as an idealized learning cycle or spiral where the learner ‘touches all the bases’ – experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting – in a recursive process that is responsive to the learning situation and what is being learned (Kolb 2008).
There are six general propositions of experiential learning theory:  learning is best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes, learning is relearning, learning requires a resolution of dialectically opposed modes of adaptation to the world, learning is holistic, learning involves interactions between the learner and environment, and finally, learning is constructivist in nature.
Faculty will help students to experience in a personal and immediate way the phenomena in their field of specialization. They stand ready with alternative theories and concepts as students attempt to assimilate their observations into their own conception of reality. They assist in deducing the implications of the students’ concepts and in designing new ‘experiments’ to test these implications through practical, real-world experience (Kolb 2008).
My vision is for the university to focus on experiences.  I firmly believe that the best learning happens outside of the classroom.  While classroom time is important and pertinent to our overall goal, being able to include more outside experiences will help with preparing our students for the future.
Collegial Model
In the book “How Colleges Work:  The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership” by Robert Birnbaum, he describes five types of academic institutions.  The collegial model is described as representing a community of administrators, faculty, and students in which all groups work together to create a quality educational environment (Birnbaum, 1988).  He describes this type of college as “a community of colleagues-[or] in other words… a collegium” (p. 87).  I will be focusing on the collegial model so that all voices are heard on campus.  While this may be time consuming, it gives us the ability to hear all opinions.  Decisions to be made will be discussed among all and everyone has the ability to put their vote into action.  In the collegium model, administrators are not placed above faculty, instead we are all one university.  As the president, I want to be viewed as a colleague assisting with service rather than superiority.
Working with the collegial model, I will impose an academic senate with an influential focus.  Robert Birnbaum (1999) stresses that governance is a shared responsibility, a joint effort involving multiple constituencies with particular emphasis given to the participation of faculty.
The senate will maintain authority over curriculum, promotion, tenure, and academic standards.  There will also be participation in and significant influence among decision making that encompasses a broader spectrum of the institution. Decisions involving athletics, development, budget priorities, and the selection of new senior administrators are a few areas where this senate will be involved.