Learning that Transforms
Excerpt from In Step with Jesus: The Journey Begins p 43:
Much of human learning is like addition. We add to what we know about carpentry or cooking, about our careers or our hobbies, about being parents or grandparents. But some learning is like an explosion. When the debris settles, we realise the landscape has changed. This explosive kind of learning is called transformational learning. And it is the kind of learning that the disciples experienced from the fallout of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus….
Transformational learning changes your most deeply held beliefs or assumptions – sometimes your worldview. It changes the lens through which you see everything. Because of the importance of transformational learning, many people have studied it, trying to figure out how it happens. Here is the way one educator has described how we are changed by what we learn [James E. Loder, The Transforming Moment, 2nd e. (Colorado Springs, Colo.: Helmers and Howard, 1989), pp. 2-4]:
1. You experience a “crisis” or “disorienting dilemma,” for example, with a tragic of disappointing experience or with something you hear or read that your current persecutive cannot explain or help you endure.
2. During the search for an answer, you try to resolve the dilemma. Your mind attempts to find an explanation. This can last only minutes – or years.
3. The “aha moment” comes when you suddenly gain insight into the dilemma; you find a solution and experience a sense of relief or a sense that your world has been put back together again. In spiritual matters, this is when the Holy Spirit gives new understanding.
4. The final step is interpretation and verification. Now, with your new perspective, you interpret your life in a new way, looking differently at your experiences and beliefs, both current and past. You also look to others to affirm the truthfulness of your new understanding.
Have you had transforming learning that have changed your worldview? Did they follow this pattern?
by: Jinha Kim
"But those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:14