Self, other and transformative learning: pre-service teachers’ knowing in a Culture-Writing course at a Chinese university

ABSTRACT

This article presents an ethnographic case study of pre-service teachers’ transformative learning in a Culture-Writing course at a Chinese university. In recounting three stories with fieldwork data gleaned from moments of students’ pre-class discussions, reflective writings, and reports on term-paper projects, this study showcases how a group of student-teachers transformed the self through getting to know and/or re-understanding other(s). Learning to ‘write culture’, as their teacher led them to see, is to appreciate the lifeworlds of others and further to destabilise taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs, and understandings, thereby leading towards transformation. I argue that transformative learning takes place in the process of knowing and rebuilding the self in relationships with other(s). It constitutes moments of critical shift that place the self and identity in a more reflexive, relational, and reversible position within specific socio-cultural contexts. This study contributes to the ongoing discussions on transformative education by illuminating how other(s) play a role in promoting pre-service teachers’ transformation in a classroom-based course.

KEYWORDS:

• Self
• other
• transformative learning
• pre-service teacher
• knowing
• critical reflection/thinking

Acknowledgments

I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers and Dr. Simon Hoult, Prof. Linden West, and Dr. Hua Yu for their careful reading and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article. I’m also grateful to the participants. Without their sturdy support, this paper would not have been possible. This study is supported by 2022 Start-Up Research Funding of Zhejiang University of Science and Technology [grant number: F701111M03]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I was enrolled in a post-graduate programme at the university when the study was conducted.