An Argument for Strong Learning in Higher Education

ABSTRACT

This article debates whether the concept of satisfaction as a measurement of quality in higher education supports the goal of enhancing transformative learning. As higher education is about transforming people, not just their knowledge, it is argued that learning challenges the identities of students, and even questions their personal integrity. Transformative learning is a painful process as well as a state of being that students have to accept and see as not only necessary but desired. Considerations of quality in higher education should therefore proceed from the goal of enhancing transformative learning based on the concept of ‘strong learning’. A ‘transformative learning identity’ demands philosophically grounded pedagogics, not only about learning as a process but about the forces that shape and make learning possible in the first place. Strong learning—being such a learning philosophy—approaches learning as a social and processural phenomenon, where learning is made possible through a specific assemblage of social and processural conditions that force learning to be transformative through a continuous production of crisis.

Keywords:

• Learning
• strong learning
• transformative learning
• evaluation

Notes

[1] The student is referring to the movie The Matrix. Its protagonist is offered a choice between a red pill and a blue pill. The first will open his mind to way the world really is, the second will allow return him to his habitual (false) conception of the world. This is the source of the now common phrase ‘I should have taken the blue pill’ to express ironic regret over becoming aware of the truth. It is here corrupted slightly as ‘the other pill’.

[2] I want to thank the anonymous reviewer who suggested this very fitting metaphor.