Change and Deeper Change: Transforming Social ...

Journal of Social Work Education, 50: 587–598, 2014 Copyright © Council on Social Work Education ISSN: 1043-7797 print / 2163-5811 online DOI: 10.1080/10437797.2014.947897

Change and Deeper Change: Transforming Social Work Education Stanley L. Witkin

In recent years, the concept of transformation has become more prevalent in the social work literature; however, its use is quite varied. In this article, I attempt to disentangle some of these uses. I then propose a conceptualization of transformation and discuss its relevance for social work education. In this conceptualization, transformation is considered an orientation to learning and knowing rather than about particular content or an end state. I conclude with some ideas about how this conceptualization might be integrated into social work education.

When I began my career in social work education more than three decades ago I would enter the classroom with reams of detailed notes on the topic of the day. Rarely did I stray far from my densely crafted prose. There were two reasons for this. First, I was operating largely from an acquisition metaphor (Sfard, 1998) in which students were likened to empty vessels that I was supposed to fill with facts. I believed that my notes contained essential knowledge and that I had an obligation to present it to my students. My second reason, which I kept to myself, had to do with my insecurities about competently performing my professorial role. I worried that I would run out of things to say or that I might be asked questions that I could not answer, thereby publically displaying my inadequacy. These beliefs and feelings accounted for both my copiousness (some might call it overpreparation) and strict adherence to my script.1 Over time, experience and tenure helped me to feel more at ease and occasionally deviate from my scripts. When course enrollments were small enough, I allowed for some small group discussions and began constructing assignments designed to generate interaction. What remained, however, was the notion that students’ learning was my responsibility. I was the expert, they were the acolytes; content was primary, testing was a valuable assessment tool (and motivator), and grades were valid indicators of achievement. I also held an individualistic conception of knowledge. Whether through reasoning or through accurate mapping of the external environment, knowledge was the possession of individual minds (Gergen, 2001). So although my Accepted: May 2014 This is an invited article solicited by Editor-in-Chief Susan P. Robbins for the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Social Work Education. Stanley L. Witkin is professor at the University of Vermont. Address correspondence to Stanley L. Witkin, University of Vermont, Department of Social Work, 443 Waterman Building, 85 South Prospect Street, Burlington, VT 05405-0160, USA. E-mail: [email protected] 1 It is not surprising that my approach mirrored, with a few notable exceptions, my own education. This is not to condemn this didactic approach; after all, it worked out pretty well for me.

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educational practices began to change and, by some measures, improve, these changes were within the paradigm—my understanding of knowledge and learning had remained largely the same. Like many social work educators, I wanted my students to become change agents and to work toward the development of a more just society. However, it took a transformative change in my own thinking to make the connection between these aims and my entrenchment in mainstream educational philosophy and practice. This article is about this relationship, which I believe is still representative of social work education. I will argue that if we wish social workers to be agents of societal transformation, then we need to rethink our educational approaches in radical ways. This radicalism extends beyond a political emphasis on concepts such as human rights and social justice to an intellectual transformation of our ideas about knowledge and learning. My particular focus will be on the concept of transformation as it applies to social work—in particular, social work education. First, I will discuss the concept of transformation and its various usages. Next, I will suggest a conceptualization of transformation that will form the basis for my arguments going forward. I will argue that the dominance of neoliberal ideology in the United States has reshaped higher education and social work education in ways that have transformed education in negative ways and that we need a countertransformation that transcends content but prepares our students to challenge the oppressive discourses that threaten the profession and the people that we serve. The remainder of this article will take up this issue beginning with a discussion of transformative learning theory and how it compares with my own conceptualization. I conclude with two ideas for facilitating the development of transformative learning in social work education. My hope is that these ideas will invite further dialogue on this topic.

MEANINGS OF TRANSFORMATION In recent years the word transformation seems to be appearing more frequently in the social work literature (e.g., Blunt, 2007; Desyllas & Sinclair, 2014; Noakes, 2014). The increased visibility of this concept suggests a growing belief in the need or desirability of significant change in the understanding, practice, and aims of education, practice, or inquiry. Transformation denotes change. Its connotative meaning suggests such change is more than incremental or superficial, but dramatic or profound. The word transformation has four typical grammatical functions: as an adjective, a noun, a verb, or an adverb. Most common is its use as an adjective as in the phrase transformative education. This phrase implies education that aims to transform (e.g., the way students think) or educational practices designed to bring about transformation. As a noun, transformation can refer, implicitly or explicitly, to some changed state, or to the change itself (e.g., “to be an effective force for change, social work will require a transformation in how we practice”). These meanings are related to issues of theory, assessment and measurement—how transformation is conceptualized and operationalized and how a pretransformation situation is understood. As a verb, to transform refers to the action of transforming. Often there is a judgment that something is having a transformative effect (e.g., “the education program transformed the students’ understanding of poverty”). Finally, the adverbial form suggests the capability to be transformed (i.e., transformable). Although this use has received comparatively less attention, it is particularly relevant when considering the foundational beliefs and capacity of organizations and institutions to transform themselves or, conversely, the degree to which they are

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resistant to such change. In addition, to be transformable implies that transformation is not an end state (as long as the capacity to transform continues to exist), but a point at which a transformative change is identified and articulated. I return to this idea later in the article. As used here, transformative change—whether individual, organizational, or societal—refers to change that goes beyond appearances, the embellishment of putative understandings, the enhancement of existing practices, or the acceptance of taken-for-granted beliefs. Rather, it refers to change that is perceived and experienced as foundational and systemic, often accompanied by a change in assumptions, beliefs, and possibly values. It is not confined to substantive change (i.e., the content of beliefs); however, it may include new ontological and epistemological understandings such as the nature of knowledge.2 This conceptualization is similar to the distinction among what has been termed first-, second-, and third-order change. Generally, first-order change is incremental and system maintaining; second-order change is systemic, questioning widely held assumptions and challenging the status quo; third-order change refers to the capacity of a system of transform itself (e.g., Bartunek & Moch, 1987). Particularly relevant to social work is what Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fisch (1974) called an error of “logical typing”—attempting to instigate a change at one level when another level is needed. This is similar to the argument that critical social workers have made when they argue against adaptation and accommodation and for systemic changes, or “the use of individual change strategies when problems are a function of underlying social determinants” (Swerissen & Crisp, 2004, p. 126). Less discussed, but integral to my conceptualization, is a third meaning, which I would identify as a transforming orientation—a general way of interacting with ideas, beliefs, assumptions (i.e., sense-making) that foregrounds change. This idea is addressed later in the article. My previous description of my early career teaching illustrates these points. The changes that I made were basically first-order changes; underlying assumptions and salient beliefs remained intact. The system was not challenged. What it means to be a good teacher was not changed (see Witkin, 2007, for an extended example). Similarly, when we focus on things such as writing better syllabi, developing more measureable assignments, establishing a standardized grading system, or introducing a new topic into the curriculum, we are engaging in first-order change. Compare this type of change to change about the meanings of knowledge and learning or foundational beliefs about concepts such as truth, facts, and human rights. Or go even further and consider not only changes in what we think but also in how we think (i.e., identifying our sensemaking frameworks). For instance, what if instead of assuming that knowledge is individualistic and internal—the possession of individual minds—we think of it as communal and constructed in social intercourse (Gergen, 2001). Similarly, what if concepts were considered to gain their intelligibility through social practices within different social contexts, and language was viewed as constituting realities (Jha, 2012)? And what if conversation was taken as the primary metaphor for learning? This kind of interrogation can instigate transformative change. Returning to the previous example, it might lead to changes in the meaning of foundational concepts such as learning, a reevaluation of conventional practices such as lectures, syllabi, and grading, a dissolution of the 2 I am not trying to define transformative change as much as give readers a sense of how I understand this concept. I recommend considering this discussion as a potential resource for action rather than definitive pronouncements of the real.

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student–teacher relationship as hierarchical and asymmetrical, and an approach that challenges institutional mandates. It might spawn new models and practices such as learning communities and cofacilitated learning (Witkin & Saleebey, 2007).

TWO EXAMPLES OF TRANSFORMATIVE THINKING It may be helpful at this point to provide some brief examples of what I consider to be potentially transformative ways of understanding. These examples are selected for the profundity of change they inspire from what is commonly understood to be the case. The first example, from Emmanual Levinas’s view of ethics, illustrates an inversion of a fundamental, taken-for-granted proposition whose implications reverberate across many ways of knowing. The second example, from social construction, exemplifies a general orientation to understanding that expresses much of what I mean by transformative learning although it is not necessarily the only way this could be expressed.3 Levinas’s Ethics The philosopher Emmanual Levinas introduced the radical idea that ethics precedes knowledge. Although seemingly simple in its conceptualization, this idea overturns a foundational belief about ethics—that certain knowledge is required for us to act ethically toward others. This can be seen in social work’s stance toward cultural competence—the belief that knowledge of cultural, racial, and ethnic categories is a necessary precondition for ethically appropriate practice. From a Levinasian perspective, such a belief perpetuates a form of cultural violence in the sense of denying the other’s singularity, a uniqueness that can never be captured (Ben-Ari & Strier, 2010). This position transforms our view of cultural competence to the point of dislodging its authority and questioning its value. It calls for a way of relating to others that does not single out people associated with particular social categories, but to all others. Rather than asking what we need to know about culturally different others to work with them competently, Levinas inverts this question and asks, “What relation to the other is necessary in order for knowledge to be possible?” (Ben-Ari & Strier, 2010, p. 2159) To accept Levinas’s position is to accept that we can never know others, certainly not in the sense implied by cultural, ethnic, or racial knowledge. Rather, it invites a kind of radical openness that defies articulation. This leads social work scholars such as Rossiter (2011) to propose a view of practice she calls unsettled social work: “a conception of practice that is committed to living on the razor’s edge of the violence of representation and the necessity for justice and service” (p. 989). Rossiter’s view illustrates that transformative change—because it is transformative—may be difficult to articulate in conventional language or using established categories. Social Construction For Levinas humans are social beings that cannot be known in isolation or in our representations (Zhao, 2012). This view is congruent with social construction, a broad, intellectual resource 3I

am not suggesting that these views are correct and that alternative views are wrong; in fact, such distinctions are, from my perspective, not most relevant.


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with applicability to many areas. Of particular relevance to this discussion is the constructionist view of knowledge, mentioned previously, as originating in relationships rather than, as commonly believed, within individual minds. From this perspective judgments of truth and falsity, morality, and aesthetics are located in and generated through historical, cultural, and social processes. Social construction challenges the traditions of the individual as the source, generator, and possessor of knowledge. Truth is viewed functionally rather than as an expression of the real (Gergen, 2009; Witkin, 2011). Also, representative of social construction is the questioning of well-established and taken-for-granted beliefs and assumptions, an orientation that I view as integral to a transformative approach. Iversen, Gergen, and Fairbanks (2005) provided an illustrative social work example in their constructionist analysis of the assessment process. Their starting point was to problematize the very idea of assessment as commonly understood. Rather than accept the underlying assumptions of conventional assessment such as to discover the real problem, they reconceptualized assessment as a future-oriented, collaborative, dialogical process. They identified three transformative outcomes of this process: “challenging existing realities; realizing new realities; and the potential of continuous dialogue” (Iversen, Gergen, & Fairbanks, 2005, p. 11). These outcomes can be considered both transformative and transforming. Also, as the authors noted, a constructionist critique does not seek nor claim itself to be a new truth. Social construction is also a social construction whose intelligibility, warrant, and rhetorical force depend on communal traditions. Additionally, rather than eliminating opposing viewpoints, it attempts to expand the range of possible alternatives. Finally, it offers an affirmative vision. All of these features, I would argue, are important considerations in a transformative approach.

TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING The concept of transformative learning has long been a concern in the field of adult education. Particularly influential has been transformative learning theory initially developed by Jack Mizerow in the late 1970s based on his experiences with adult women reentering higher education (Mizerow, 1978). Drawing on the work of Paolo Friere and Jurgen Habermas, Mizerow (2009) defined transformative learning as the process by which we transform problematic frames of reference (mindsets, habits of mind, meaning perspectives)—sets of assumption and expectation—to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective and emotionally able to change. Such frames are better because they are more likely to generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action. (p. 93)

A prerequisite for transformative learning is to bring these frames of reference into awareness. This enables learners to critically reflect on their frames, become aware of how they restrict their thinking, and act in new ways to redefine their world (Mezirow, 1997). Although enormously influential, transformative learning theory has had its critics. Limitations identified include, for example, being too rational and individualistic, not adequately addressing social context, and being a euphemism for “good teaching” (Newman, 2012, p. 37; see also Morrice, 2013; Taylor & Cranton, 2013; for a response to some of these criticisms, see Mezirow, 2009a). Also, others have theorized transformative learning somewhat differently, for example, focusing more on inner work (Dirkx, 1997).

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Within social work education, concepts of transformative learning and transformative learning theory have been infrequently discussed or used (a notable exception is Jones, 2009, 2010, 2011, discussed below). Sometimes transformation is used to suggest an important or significant change without exposition of the concept (Peller, Beebe, & Aldrighetti, 2012). Or it might be used to represent the integration of a neglected content area into the curriculum (Hooyman & Tompkins, 2005). Still others describe programs that have features associated with transformative learning without using the term (e.g., Ghose, 2012) or embed transformative concepts within other perspectives such as critical reflection and critical race theory (Bay & Macfarlane, 2011; Ortiz & Jani, 2010). A recent effort to use concepts of transformative learning theory is McCusker’s (2013) study of discrepant perspectives as a catalyst for students’ changes in attitudes and knowledge. This is similar to Mezirow’s concept of disorienting dilemmas (1981). According to transformative learning theory, presenting learners with a viewpoint that contrasts with their existing perspectives may, in some cases, lead to a reexamination of that perspective. This reexamination, in turn, may engender the kind of profound changes associated with transformation. Such change, however, is not guaranteed, and the discrepant perspective may be ignored or dismissed. A less obvious potential limitation of the discrepant perspective thesis is that although it might lead to a profound change, it may only amount to replacing one frame of reference with another. That is, it is adopting the noun form of transformation, viewing it as an end state. For example, providing students with an alternative belief about some issue such as a neurobiological explanation of mental illness may represent a discrepant perspective but merely substitutes one belief system— usually the one favored by the teacher—over another. It fails to provide a critical framework for understanding the new belief or the broader context within which that belief is seen as intelligible and credible. From this perspective, transformative learning is not simply embodied in new beliefs but in an orientation and capacity to continually critically assess, reflect, and innovate. More in line with my conceptualization is Jones’s (2010, 2011) work on learning about environmental issues. Drawing on transformative learning theory, he argues for “a pedagogical approach to social work education that is capable of challenging existing paradigms, critically evaluating emerging alternatives, and encouraging action grounded in new ways of understanding the world” (2010, p. 68). Such an approach has the potential to bring about a fundamental change in students’ understanding of their relationship with the nonhuman world. Congruent with my previous discussion, Jones (2011) also distinguishes between levels of change in which content is added or integrated into an existing curriculum or when the curriculum itself is the object of transformation. It is important to note that Jones (2009, 2010) frames his approach within the broader context of modernism and neoliberalism.

THE NEOLIBERAL CONTEXT OF EDUCATION Transformation—when planned—requires a reference point, something to transform from. An understanding of a particular situation or state of affairs (e.g., social work education in relation to the current social landscape) provides the impetus and rationale for a transformative approach.4 4 This understanding is itself a possible object of transformation that could change the transformative process (e.g., its need or direction).


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These understandings will reflect different interests, beliefs, and assessments. As McWhinney and Markos (2003) noted, “Transformations in individuals or whole groups can be disturbing to people for whom the status quo is the desired condition” (p. 20). Educational examples include a deficiency in the curriculum, either related to particular content (e.g., the environment) or how particular content is taught (e.g., as a specialization); the desire to change educational focus (e.g., from clinical to structural); or to prepare students to better address the changes and complexities in the contemporary social environment, (e.g., globalization). Although all of these rationales may have merit, the meanings of transformation they generate will vary. For example, Hooyman and Tompkins (2005) believed that content on gerontology had not been given the prominence it deserved. For them a transformative approach meant integrating gerontology into the curriculum rather than treating it as a specialization. Although their assessment may have merit and their recommendations would generate change, its transformative potential, as I have conceptualized it, is questionable. The above illustrates that although judgments of current contexts and future trends provide motivation and justification for transformative approaches, what constitutes transformation will vary based on such factors as beliefs about knowledge, assessment, and pedagogical practices. This raises the question of whether transformative change can occur on one level (e.g., individual) without a parallel change in other levels (e.g., societal). For instance, if assessment guides response, then we might ask (as implied by Iversen, Gergen, & Fairbanks, 2005) whether transformative assessments are necessary for transformative practice. Or is the situation more as Audre Lorde (2007, p. 112) has written in a different context—that when we use the “masters’ tools . . . only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable”? Education as a social institution reflects and contributes to the broader social context in which it functions. In this regard, the hegemony of neoliberal ideology has engendered concern among scholars in various disciplines and professions. Higher education ranks high among these concerns, specifically the influence of neoliberalism on teaching, learning, and scholarship (Curtis, 2013; Patrick, 2013; Vassallo, 2013). Of particular significance is the commodification of knowledge and students. From this perspective students are valued primarily as workers, and the primary role of education is to prepare them for these roles (Patrick, 2013). Institutions of higher education, rather than being bastions of resistance against such trends, have increasingly been complicit in supporting this agenda through, for example, the importance placed on funded knowledge. Social work education has been similarly influenced as noted in a recent article by Reisch (2013), who lamented that “the growing corporatization of universities . . . has transformed students from learners into consumers” (p. 726). Other manifestations of this neoliberal influence, according to Reisch, can be seen in the emphasis on evidence-based practice, methodological orthodoxy, and individual responsibility in social work scholarship and accreditation standards and external funding in education. Such influences reshape the role of faculty. Preston and Aslett (2014) argued that “the autonomy and creativity of faculty are undermined by new managerial measurements of productivity and the promotion of standardized epistemologies over those considered transformative or critical” (p. 503). In a commodified knowledge economy (Patrick, 2013) that emphasizes preparing students as knowledge workers to be the drivers of the economy, social work will be marginalized. We can respond to this marginalization by adopting the perspectives of the dominant discourses or by resisting its domination through transformative educational practices.

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Ironically, neoliberalism itself can be viewed as a transforming force “in the relationship between education and social justice” although in this case the assumption is that all can succeed regardless of sociocultural contexts (Brown & Lauder, 2006, p. 28, as cited in Patrick, 2013, p. 2). Thus, although transformation suggests profound change, it is not equivalent to desirable change. Further Thoughts and Suggestions for a Transforming Social Work Education Jones (2009) argued that one’s goal for social work, broadly contrasted as the maintenance of the status quo or contributing to social transformation, will influence our educational practices. Although I agree with his argument, I also suspect that few social work educators would explicitly endorse the status quo position. Despite what is claimed, however, the veracity of one’s avowed position will depend on who is judging it and from what perspective. For example, I would tend to view someone teaching a conventional research course—adhering to a truth through method approach—as supporting the status quo even if she or he claimed that her or his goal was social transformation. When a concept such as transformation gains currency, it tends to be appropriated by people operating from various perspectives. This can become confusing and can generate arguments about what transformation really is. For me, this question is unresolvable and generally unproductive. Therefore, I conclude with some ideas for facilitating transformative education congruent with the framework I have attempted to describe. Creativity and Imagination Transformative learning requires more than a critique of beliefs and assumptions. It requires imagining “how things could be otherwise” (Mezirow, 2009b, p. 103). To imagine is to envision new possibilities, to transcend the boundaries of what is taken as true, extant, or possible. Creativity is the engine of imagination encouraging novel ways of understanding and responding. In the current climate of neoliberalism and technocratic, evidence-based approaches, I fear that not only have we diminished the importance of imagination and creativity but that our imaginings have become severely truncated. For example, when risk thinking is seen as an inherent feature of reality, then our imaginings tend to be confined to its expressions and parameters: actuarial data, probabilities, and predictions. Or when external funding generates courses constrained by what and how particular content must be covered (e.g., an individualistic approach to chemical dependency), transformative learning is unlikely. Yet, given the complexities of the issues that affect human well-being (the realm of social work), imagination, creativity, and innovation are desperately needed (certainly at least as much as data that simply document or support “the way things are”). Education bounded by dominant discourses that naturalize knowledge makes us tinkerers and reproducers, rather than transformers, of realities that are manifestations of those discourses. In contrast, an imaginative, creative, transformative education would enable students to question all such pronouncements of the real and the true, not with the aim of eliminating them, but to hold them up to critical scrutiny in light of our values and ideals and to recognize that there can always be alternatives. Generating alternatives not tied to dominant forms of understanding is


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fostered by an imaginative vision that raises questions about the justifications for that which is presupposed (Rorty, 2009) and by “exercising playful anticipatory imagination” (Elkjaer, 2009, p. 75). An example of the latter (drawing on John Dewey’s writings) is shifting from a past, causal orientation (“if–then”) to a future (“what if”) one. “The consequence of the orientation towards the future is that knowledge (in Dewey’s terms, warranted assertibilities”) is provisional, transient and subject to change (i.e., ‘fallible’) because future experience may act as a corrective to existing knowledge” (Elkjaer, 2009, p. 75).

Problematizing and Questioning Two interrelated strategies facilitative of imagination and creativity are problematization and questions. In general, problematization refers to the questioning of underlying assumptions of theory or established or taken-for-granted beliefs. It is a way of denaturalizing knowledge so that it may be available for critical analysis. Problematization is most often associated with the work of Michel Foucault. Central to Foucault’s conceptualization of problematization is an effort “to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of what is already known” (Foucault, 1985a, p. 9, as cited in Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011, p. 253). Also important in Foucault’s thinking is to ask what is it necessary to assume to come up with a particular theory or way of thinking? For example, what do we need to assume about infants and caregivers to have attachment theory, or about aging and social life to speak of developmental stages? Similarly, how do we come to construct certain actions, conditions, or ways of being as problems, and how does their construction invite and justify particular solutions? For example, how is it that “certain forms of behavior were characterized and classified as ‘madness’ while other similar forms were completely neglected at a given historical moment; the same thing for crime and delinquency” (Foucault, 2001, p. 171)? Foucault is clear that problematization does not deny the existence of problems but is an inquiry into how those problems came to be and to transcend the limits that such thinking imposes on us: “How and why were very different things in the world gathered together, characterized, analyzed, and treated as, for example, ‘mental illness’?” (Foucault, 1985b, p. 115). This type of questioning also extends to how ways of thinking are expressed in different practices—for example, pedagogical practices (Webb, 2014). Finally, there is a link between problematization and creativity. Despite its name, problematization does not seek to identify problems that have solutions but to generate conditions of complexity (Webb, 2014) and open space for creative possibilities that might “identify contingencies, or alternative games of truth, that might produce ‘new’ possibilities for thinking, engagement, and enactment” (Webb, 2014, p. 370). As can be seen in the preceding paragraphs, problematization is expressed in questions. Of course, questioning and the normative practices associated with it can also be subject to critical scrutiny. Just as problems invite solutions, questions invite answers. In fact, this seems to be a basic, taken-for-granted, structural dimension of education. When students think about what they have learned in a course, it is likely that they are thinking about answers rather than questions. However, we can question this relationship and instead follow the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1929/1986) advice to “live the questions” (p. 34). What would a course look like in which its success was measured by the number of questions rather than the number of facts the students left with? Such an approach would seem

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consistent with a transformative learning orientation. It also might help students learn how to manage uncertainty rather than attempting to impose a certainty via the truths they have inherited.

CONCLUSION In this article I have attempted to argue for the need for a transformative orientation to social work education. I have conceptualized transformative learning as more than a change in students’ beliefs but as a process of producing transformative thinkers. This process is continuous with no end point. Thus it enables and requires learners (including teachers) to maintain an ongoing critical stance toward their own and others’ ideologies, theories, beliefs, assumptions, and practices. To be critical in this context is not to be negative in the sense of aiming to eliminate or silence other views but rather, in Foucault’s (1988) poetic words, to “bring an oeuvre, a sentence, an idea to life; it would lighten fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it” (p. 326). Adopting a transformative approach to social work education is itself a potentially transformative act. It signals a willingness to confront the forces that strive to domesticate our profession and transmute it into simply another social science. It embraces the ideal that this “is more than just a mode of education, it is a process that affects the ways learners interact with their world” (Haigh, 2013, p. 51). It is a weighty endeavor, but one worth doing. REFERENCES Alvesson, M., & Sandberg, J. (2011). Generating research questions through problematization. Academy of Management Review, 36, 247–271. Bartunek, J. M., & Moch, M. K. (1987). First-order, second-order, and third-order change and organization development interventions: A cognitive approach. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 23, 483–500. Bay, U., & Macfarlane, S. (2011). Teaching critical reflection: A tool for transformative learning in social work? Social Work Education, 30, 745–758. Ben-Ari, A., & Strier, R. (2010). Rethinking cultural comptetence: What can we learn from Levinas? British Journal of Social Work, 40, 2155–2167. Blunt, K. (2007). Achieving transformative learning through a cultural competence model for transformative education. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 27, 93–114. Brown, P., & Lauder, H. (2006). Globalisation, knowledge and the myth of the magnet economy. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 4, 25–57. Curtis, N. (2013). Thought bubble: Neoliberalism and the politics of knowledge. New Formations, 80–81, 73–88. Desyllas, M. C., & Sinclair, A. (2014). Zine-making as a pedagogical tool for transformative learning in social work education. Social Work Education, 33, 296–316. Dirkx, J. M. (1997). Nurturing soul in adult learning. In P. Cranton (Ed.), Transformative learning in action: Insights from practice (pp. 79–88). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Elkjaer, B. (2009). Pragmatism: A learning theory for the future. In K. Illeris (Ed.), Contemporary theories of learning (pp. 74–89). New York, NY: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1985a). Discourse and truth: The problematization of parrhesia. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Foucault, M. (1985b). The use of pleasure: History of sexuality (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (2001). Fearless speech. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). Gergen, K. J. (2001). Social construction and pedagogical practice. In K. J. Gergen (Ed.), Social construction in context (pp. 115–136). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.


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