Assessing Transformative Learning in HE: An embodied, enacted, dialogic process

Which models and approaches can be used to foster, evaluate, and research transformative learning (TL)? This paper reflects on a theory of learning as layered and inter-personal, and presents some qualitative data about a process of evaluation of TL in a master course, namely through letters written by the students at the end of a "biographically oriented" cooperative evaluation. The paper investigates the relevance of such "qualitative" evidences in the texts, as metaphors, emotions, and ideas, that give hints of the existence of disorienting dilemmas, a pre-requisite for TL. A narrative, interpretative, and dialogical approach to knowledge seems more apt to research adult learning, since it can celebrate learners' subjectivities within relationships, and larger systems, and sustain critical views on the development of meaning in such situations.