Transformation is a term widely used in resilience thinking as a form of response to living with disaster risks. Key to enabling resilience is adaptability, itself a learned concept and practice. Transformative Learning may be a way of unlocking small and large changes in cognition, attitudes and behaviours towards disaster risk while the experience itself may allow for requisite competencies and efficacy outcomes that allow learners to learn to be flexible and adaptable in the face of shocks, including those from disasters.

This paper seeks to unlock what is meant by Transformative Learning through the development of a visualisation (see right and click on to make larger) that may be used to help cement understanding of what may be expected to occur as part of the learning process. It is hoped that this will allow others to also develop and utilise the model, especially in contexts where knowledge deficit approaches to resilience has failed to take hold.

The paper is viewable below as well as through the King's College London, Environment Politics and Development Working Paper pages, Academia and ResearchGate. The paper is a working paper which will be subject to change and development as well as the model itself which is being used to help NGO's and others understand what might be involved as part of the process as well as expected outcomes. Key to unlocking transformative learning is critical reflection which requires the spaces and places for this to occur.

Development-TL-process-model-conscious-unconscious-Justin-Sharpe.pdf