Transformative Learning
{Mezirow, 1997}
Transformative learning develops autonomous thinking, the central goal of adult education. This implies learning to make our own interpretations, using our frame of reference to define our life world.
Frames of reference are the structures of assumptions through which we understand our experiences.
A frame of reference encompasses cognitive, conative, and emotional components. It has two dimensions: habits of mind and a point of view.
Habits of mind are broad, abstract, orienting, habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. They are constituted of assumptions that constitute a set of codes.
These codes may be cultural, social, educational, economic, political, or psychological.
Habits of mind become articulated in a specific point of view.
A specific point of view is the constellation of belief, value judgment, attitude, and feeling that shapes a particular interpretation.
Points of view continually change as we reflect on the content or process by which we solve problems and identify the need to modify assumptions. This happens whenever we try to understand actions that do not work as anticipated. Points of view are more accessible to awareness and feedback from others.
Habits of mind are more durable.
We can try out another person’s point of view and appropriate it, but we cannot do this with a habit of mind.
Transformative learning is the process of effecting change in a frame of reference.
Associations, concepts, values, feelings, and conditioned responses make up a frame of reference.
They selectively shape and delimit expectations, perceptions, cognition, and feeling.
They set our line of action.
We strongly tend to reject ideas that fail to fit our preconceptions.
Frames of reference are primarily the result of cultural assimilation and the idiosyncratic influences of primary caregivers.
Transformative learning moves our frame of reference to be more inclusive, discriminating, self-reflective, and integrative of experience.
As a result, our understanding of our experience’s meaning changes, and what the authority is for a valid interpretation of our experience.
An Example of the Four Processes of Learning
Ethnocentrism is a habit of mind, the disposition to regard others outside one’s group as inferior.
A resulting point of view is the complex of feelings, beliefs, judgments, and attitudes we have regarding specific individuals or groups, for example, homosexuals, welfare recipients, people of color, or women.
One learning process would be to elaborate on an existing point of view. We can seek further evidence to support our initial bias regarding a group and expand the range or intensity of our point of view.
A second way we learn is to establish a new point of view. For example, we can encounter a new group and create new negative meaning schemas for them by focusing on their perceived shortcomings, as dictated by our ethnocentric tendency.
A third way we learn is to transform our point of view. For example, after an experience in another culture and critically reflecting on our misconceptions of this particular group, our point of view toward the group may change. We may become more tolerant or more accepting of members of that group. If this repeatedly happens with different groups, it can transform our governing habit of mind by accretion.
Finally, we may transform our ethnocentric habit of mind by becoming aware and critically reflective of our generalized bias in how we view groups other than our own. Such epochal transformations are less common and more difficult. We do not make transformative changes in how we learn as long as what we learn fits comfortably in our existing frames of reference.
Instrumental, Impressionistic, Normative, Communicative Learning
Problem-solving and learning may be communicative. It is learning to understand what is communicated. It involves at least two persons striving to understand the meaning of an interpretation or justification for a belief. Ideally, it involves reaching a consensus.
Communicative learning involves understanding purposes, values, beliefs, and feelings by critically reflecting on the assumptions underlying intentions, values, beliefs, and feelings. Becoming critically reflective requires autonomy.
We engage in discourse to validate what is being communicated. Agreement through discourse legitimizes moral values. Discourse is a dialogue devoted to assessing reasons that support competing interpretations.
Engaging effectively in discourse to validate one’s beliefs through the experience of others who share universal values requires autonomy.
Critical Reflection
Our interpretations, beliefs, and habits of mind or points of view are based on assumptions.
We may transform our frames of reference through critical reflection on these assumptions.
Transformations in frames of reference take place through critical reflection and transformation of a habit of mind, or they may result from an accretion of transformations in points of view.
Critical reflection on one’s assumptions is the key to transforming one’s taken-for-granted frame of reference.
Becoming critically reflective of the assumptions of others is fundamental to effective collaborative problem-posing and solving.
Autonomous Thinking
Full citizenship in a democracy, moral decision-making in situations of rapid change, and key competencies for workforce preparation; these issues have made learning to think as autonomous, responsible persons an important educational objective.
Adult learners’ immediate objectives may be described in terms of subject matter mastery, attainment of specific competencies, or other job-related objectives, but their goal is to become socially responsible autonomous thinkers.
Helping people learn to achieve a specific short-term objective may involve instrumental learning. However, for them to achieve their goal requires communicative learning.
The educator’s responsibility is to help learners reach their objectives as functionally more autonomous, socially responsible thinkers.
Learning must empower the individual to think as an autonomous agent in a collaborative context rather than to act on received ideas and judgments of others uncritically.
In the economic sphere, as a workforce, people are asked to adapt to changing employment conditions, exercise critical judgment managing technology systems, and flexibly engage in more effective collaborative decision-making.
Foundations
The achievement in childhood learning is to acquire the ability and disposition to
recognize cause-effect relationships,
use informal logic in making analogies and generalizations,
become aware of and control their own emotions,
become empathic with others,
use imagination to construct narratives, and
think abstractly.
Adolescents may learn to
think hypothetically, and
become critically reflective of what they read, see, and hear.
In adulthood, the task is to become
more aware and critical in assessing assumptions governing one’s own and others’ beliefs, values, judgments, and feelings;
more aware of and better able to recognize frames of reference and paradigms (collective frames of reference) and to imagine alternatives; and
more responsible and effective at working with others to collectively assess reasons, pose and solve problems, and arrive at tentative best judgment regarding contested beliefs.
Education for Transformative Learning
There is an inherent logic, ideal, and purpose in transformative learning.
The process involves transforming frames of reference through critical reflection of assumptions, validating contested beliefs through discourse, taking action on one’s reflective insight, and critically assessing it.
Transformative learning is not an add-on. On the contrary, it is the essence of adult education. Adult education aims to help the individual become a more autonomous thinker by learning to negotiate their values, meanings, and purposes rather than uncritically acting on those of others.
This goal cannot be taken for granted; educational interventions are necessary to ensure that the learner acquires the understanding, skills, and dispositions essential for transformative learning and autonomy.
Methods of critical incidents, metaphor analysis, concept mapping, consciousness-raising, life histories, repertory grids, and participation in social action encourage critical reflection and experience in discourse. Other methods comprise learning contracts, group projects, role play, case studies, and simulations.
Educators must assume responsibility for fostering critical reflectivity and experience in discourse. This involves group deliberation and group problem solving, participation in small-group discussions to assess reasons, examine evidence, and arrive at reflective judgment. Learning takes place through discovery and the imaginative use of metaphors to solve and redefine problems.
The key idea is to help the learners actively engage the concepts presented in their own lives and collectively critically assess the justification of new knowledge.
In fostering self-direction, the emphasis is on creating an environment in which learners become increasingly adept at learning from each other and helping each other learn in problem-solving groups.
The educator as facilitator encourages learners to create norms that accept order, justice, and civility in the classroom; respect and responsibility for helping each other learn; welcome diversity; foster peer collaboration; and provide equal opportunity for participation.
Ideal conditions for adult learning are also ideal conditions of effective discourse where participants have full information; are free from coercion; have equal opportunity to assume the various roles of discourse, such as to advance beliefs, challenge, defend, explain, assess evidence, and judge arguments; become critically reflective of assumptions; are empathic and open to other perspectives; are willing to listen and to search for common ground or a synthesis of different points of view; can make tentative best judgment to guide action.
Transformative Learning Theory
{Taylor, 2008. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, no. 119, Fall 2008}
Observing impermanence casts doubt on what we know and believe, challenging us to develop a more critical worldview as we make meaning of daily life. Adults learn to negotiate and act upon their own purposes, values, feelings, and meanings, developing more reliable beliefs, exploring and validating their fidelity, and making informed decisions. Transformative learning theory explains this constructing and appropriating of new and revised meaning interpretations of experience. {Reflective-critical judgment is a way of understanding and sense-making. We use sense-making because it is uncertain what any situation means for us, our lives, and our next moment.}
Meaning guides action. Meaning is an interpretation of the world that changes as one reinterprets one’s experience reflectively within a frame of reference. Reference frames are assumption and expectation structures that frame (circumscribe) our tacit viewpoints and influence (circumscribe) our {person=} thinking, beliefs, and actions.
Through reflecting on the experience, one may revise a reference frame, leading to perspective transformation, resulting in a more inclusive, differentiating, permeable, critically reflective, and integrative frame of reference that is more fully developed and functional.
A series of cumulative transformed meaning schemes or a personal or social crisis can cause individuals to question their existence and the meaning of these stressful and painful experiences, leading to such a perspective transformation. Critical reflecting on one’s experience and engaging in dialogue with others prompt and develop such transformation.
Critical discourse is used to question deeply held assumptions, but only when we have reason to question their comprehensibility, truth, appropriateness (concerning norms), or authenticity (concerning feelings), opening them to critical scrutiny. Critical scrutiny and reflection are a conscious and explicit reassessing of our meaning structures’ consequence and origin, attempting to justify our beliefs by rationally examining assumptions and resulting thoughts or challenging the thought’s validity through discourse with others of differing viewpoints and arriving at the best-informed judgment.
Transformative learning has a social impact beyond the individual.
Also, the educator or facilitator should be willing to transform in helping their students transform, developing a deeper awareness of their frames of reference and how they shape practice.
Alternative Conceptions of Transformative Learning
Mezirow’s is a psycho-critical perspective of transformative learning. Alternative perspectives include psychoanalytic, psychodevelopmental, and social emancipatory ones.
A psychoanalytic view of transformative learning emphasizes individuation, a lifelong journey of self-understanding through reflecting on psychic structures that make up one’s identity (ego, shadow, persona, collective unconscious, etc.). Individuation involves the discovery of new talents, a sense of empowerment and confidence, a deeper understanding of one’s inner self, and a greater sense of self-responsibility. {Transformative learning is individuation. Psychic structures make up identity.}
A psychodevelopmental view takes a lifespan view, reflecting continuous, incremental, and progressive growth, with epistemic change (in how we make meaning) central to it. Change in meaning-making goes beyond just a change in behavioral repertoire or quantity of knowledge. In addition, relationships, personal-contextual influences, and holistic ways of knowing are emphasized, in contrast to Mezirow’s rational emphasis.
These perspectives take the individual as the unit of analysis, with little consideration of context and social change in the transformative experience.
A social-emancipatory view makes social transformation the goal by demythicizing reality, where the oppressed develop a critical consciousness (i.e., conscientization). Critical reflection is central to rediscovering the power and helping learners develop an awareness of agency to transform society and their own reality. Emancipatory transformative learning and teaching is a “problem-posing” and dialogic methodology, couched in “acts of cognition not in the transferal of information.” The teacher works as a political agent on an equal footing with students.
{With my social-emancipatory view on adult learning, I endorse fostering emancipatory transformative learning where the learner and the facilitator are on equal footing, the facilitator works as a political agent, and the learner discovers their power and awareness of their agency to transform society.}
Four additional views have lately emerged.
The “brain-based” neurobiological perspective sees transformation as invoking “the parasympathetic branch of the autonomous nervous system, and the hypothalamic-pituitary oxytocin secreting endocrine system to alter learning during periods of search and discovery.” The findings suggest that the brain structure changes during learning, offering a distinctive neurobiological, physically based pathway to transformative learning as “volitional, curiosity-based, discovery-driven, and mentor-assisted” and most effective at higher cognitive levels. A neurobiological approach suggests that transformative learning requires discomfort before discovery; is rooted in students’ experience, needs, and interests; is strengthened by emotive, sensory, and kinesthetic experiences; appreciates differences in learning between males and females, and demands that educators acquire an understanding of a unique discourse and knowledge base of neurobiological systems.
A cultural-spiritual view of transformative learning focuses on how learners construct knowledge narratives, engaging storytelling on a personal and social level through group inquiry to foster narrative transformation. The teacher collaborates with a relational emphasis on group inquiry and narrative reasoning, assisting the learner in sharing experience stories and revising new stories in the process.
A race-centric view takes race as the predominant unit of analysis, emphasizing social-political dimensions of learning. “Rites of passage and rituals are among the many forms Africans have created to nurture consciousness of every member of society into a greater connection with the Self, the Community, and the Universe.” It is culturally bounded, oppositional, and non-individualistic transformative learning, promoting inclusion (giving voice to the historically silenced), empowerment (not self-actualization but belongingness and equity as a cultural member), and learning to negotiate effectively between and across cultures.
A planetary view takes the totality of life’s context, intending to reorganize the whole system and recognize the interconnectedness among the universe, planet, natural environment, human community, and personal world. Transformation explores how we view our human counterparts as well as how we relate to the physical world. Creating a new story that recognizes social-political, ecological, and planetary dimensions becomes paramount.
New Insights from Research and Implications for Practice
The focus has shifted from particular transformative life events toward greater interest in factors of critical reflection, holistic approaches, and relationships.
Perspective transformation is an enduring and irreversible process, making it an ontological shift beyond an epistemological change in worldview. Therefore, educators should create opportunities for learners to act on new insights. Without experiences to test and explore new perspectives, learners are unlikely to transform.
New insights have established the significance of critical reflection. The learner may need to begin with premise reflection, concerned with why they teach. Premise reflection involves critically “questioning our pre-suppositions underlying our knowledge.” Educators engage learners in classroom practices that assist in developing critical reflection through reflective journaling, classroom dialogues, and critical questioning.
Third, a holistic approach, in addition to rational discourse and critical reflection, recognizes the role of feelings, other ways of knowing (somatic, intuition), and the role of relationships. Inviting the whole person into the classroom environment engages the person in fullness of being: an affective, intuitive, thinking, physical, and spiritual self. In concert with reason, active dialogue about learners’ feelings allows unconscious self-aspects to seek expression through various images, feelings, and behaviors within the learning setting. (Dirkx, 2006).
Relational qualities essential to successful peer-learning partnerships are nonhierarchical status, non-evaluative feedback, voluntary participation, partner selection, authenticity, and mutual goals.
Fourth, transformation is not a given, and barriers can inhibit or discourage it. Educators should develop an awareness of learner readiness for change. Life experience might be a significant factor in readiness. Barriers that inhibit transformative learning might include imposed rules and sanctions on learners, unequal distribution of group responsibilities among cohort participants, emphasis on task completion instead of reflective dialogue, and rigid role assignments. As an example from a study, a lack of critical reflection among learners might truncate the group process prematurely because “group members did not ask critical questions of one another or challenge each other’s assumptions.” Another example of non-reflective learning indicates learning preferences in using reflective journaling. Some learners preferred talking about issues rather than writing them in a journal. Some did not see it as necessary to write their thoughts and therefore did not see a need for journal writing. This lack of change on the individual level reminds educators to take time to know students as individuals, recognize their preferences, and engage a variety of approaches in fostering transformative learning.
The Evolution of Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory
{Kitchenham, 2008. Journal of Transformative Education Volume 6 Number 2 April 2008.}
Transformative learning theory is a theoretical framework for understanding adult learners’ lifelong learning and mental growth experiences. How and why do adults learn?
Transformative learning is a complex and multifaceted type of learning that is a deep, structural shift in basic premises of thought, feelings, and actions.
Mezirow’s theory originated from a 1975 qualitative study to identify factors that impede or facilitate women’s progress in re-entry programs for returning to postsecondary study or the workplace after an extended time out. The research team concluded that the respondents had undergone a personal transformation and identified 10 phases they could experience.
Transformative learning requires critical self-reflection on assumptions and critical discourse to validate the best judgment. King and Kitchener (1994) describe these elements as “the process an individual evokes to monitor the epistemic nature of problems and the truth value of alternative solutions.”
Historical influences on specific facets of transformative learning theory are Kuhn’s (1962) paradigm: perspective transformation, frame of reference, meaning perspective, habit of mind; Freire’s (1970) conscientization: disorienting dilemma, critical self-reflection, habit of mind; Habermas’ (1971, 1984) domains of learning: learning processes, perspective transformation, meaning scheme, meaning perspective.
Kuhn’s reflections on the disagreement between social and natural scientists as to what constituted legitimate scientific inquiry led him to define the concept of paradigm as universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provided model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. Paradigms share two essential elements: a set of meaning schemes and a meaning perspective. A paradigm is formed through the combined efforts of a group of scientists because they share a common set of problems and solutions (i.e., habits of mind or meaning perspective) and yet can pursue their own interests (i.e., meaning schemes) within that paradigm and come to share a common worldview (i.e., perspective transformation).
Transformative learning involves a frame of reference that comprises habits of mind and meaning perspectives, which lead to a perspective transformation.
Freire (1970) likened traditional education to the banking method of learning, whereby the teacher deposits information to those students whom the teacher deems worthy of receiving the gift of knowledge. Freire’s antidote was conscientization, learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions – developing a critical awareness – so that individuals can take action against the oppressive elements of reality. Critical consciousness is actualized through three stages of consciousness growth: intransitive thought, semi-transitive, and critical transitivity. The last stage is reflected in individuals who think globally and critically about their present conditions and decide to take action for change. This last stage parallels the notions of disorienting dilemma, critical reflection, critical self-reflection on assumptions, and critical discourse.
Habermas (1971) proposed three domains of learning: technical, practical, and emancipatory. Technical learning is rote, task-specific, and clearly governed by rules. Practical learning involves social norms. Finally, emancipatory learning is introspective and self-reflective leading to self-knowledge. Mezirow adapted Habermas’ (1971) technical, practical, and emancipatory learning domains and expanded transformative learning theory to include instrumental, dialogic, and self-reflective learning (1985).
Mezirow’s perspective transformation is the emancipatory process of becoming critically aware of how and why the structure of psycho-cultural assumptions has constrained how we see ourselves and our relationships, reconstituting this structure to permit a more inclusive and discriminating integration of experience and acting upon these new understandings.
Emancipating (perspective transformation) relates to self-directed learning. Learners ask how to best learn the information (instrumental; technical), where and when this learning best takes place (dialogic; practical), and why they are learning the information (self-reflective; emancipatory).
Mezirow (1985) defined meaning scheme and meaning perspective and introduced three learning processes within each learning type: learning within meaning schemes, learning new meaning schemes, and learning through meaning transformation. A meaning perspective is a general frame of reference comprising a series of specific meaning schemes; it is the structure of cultural and psychological assumptions that assimilate past and transform new experiences. A meaning scheme is the constellation of concept, belief, judgment, and feeling that shapes a particular interpretation.
Learning within meaning schemes involves learners working with what they already know by expanding on, complementing, and revising their present knowledge systems. The second learning process is learning new meaning schemes compatible with existing schemes within the learners’ meaning perspectives. The third process requires becoming aware of specific assumptions (schemata, criteria, rules, or repressions) on which a distorted or incomplete meaning scheme is based and transforming it through a reorganizing of meaning such that the resolution of a problem or anomaly comes through a redefinition of the problem since neither present meaning schemes nor learning new meaning schemes resolve the problem. Only learning through meaning transformation results in perspective transformation.
Transformations in set meaning schemes can accumulate or concatenate, with a series of altered meaning schemes leading to a perspective transformation painlessly. On the other hand, a comprehensive and critical re-evaluation of oneself can cause an epochal and painful transformation of meaning perspectives or sets of meaning schemes.
Critical self-reflection is central to perspective transformation. For example, learning without questioning the veracity or utility of the information, rationalizing a new viewpoint without dealing with the deep feelings that accompanied the original meaning scheme or perspective, or adopting a new belief system through a top-down, power-coercion paradigm does not lead to perspective transformation.
Revision of the Theory
{A frame of reference anchors a person’s worldview or perspective as her habits of mind grab and process issues seen as important and put out or produce a meaning perspective.
Interpretive meaning schemes are cognitive-affective-intuitive constellations.
A meaning perspective is an assimilative assumptions structure.
Meaning or perspective transformation accommodates the assumptions structure leading to a shift in the premises of one’s personhood.
The coach is a critical discourse partner for the learner’s perspective transformation to remedy her epistemic, sociolinguistic, and psychological meaning perspectives’ distortions through the 11-phase model.}
In 1991, Mezirow (1991) added a new phase of forging or negotiating new and altering or renegotiating existing relationships. He expanded the earlier notion of a distorted or undeveloped meaning perspective that leads the learner to view reality in a way that arbitrarily limits what is included, impedes differentiation, lacks permeability or openness to other ways of seeing, and does not facilitate integrating experience. The basic constructivist assumptions of the revised theory see meaning to exist within ourselves rather than in external forms such as books. Personal meanings we attribute to experience as acquired and validated through human interaction and communication. Thus, meaning becomes significant to the learner through critical discourse.
Meaning perspectives are three types: epistemic (related to knowledge and how a person uses knowledge), sociolinguistic (related to language and how it is used in social settings), and psychological (related to how people view themselves).
The remedy for epistemic, sociolinguistic, and psychological distortions is the 11-phased perspective transformation and accompanying reflective discourse. Discussion with peers is ideal for learning when a person interprets new meaning perspectives, ideally with accurate and complete information, free from coercion and distorting self-perception, able to weigh the evidence and assess arguments objectively, open to alternative perspectives, reflecting critically on presuppositions and their consequences, having equal opportunity to participate (including the chance to challenge, question, refute, and reflect, and to hear others do the same), and accepting an informed, objective, and rational consensus as a legitimate validity test.
Mezirow (1995) emphasized critical reflection that involves the nature and consequence of one’s actions and the related circumstances of their origin. He presented three types of reflection: content, process, and premise. Learners can transform an individual meaning scheme by examining previous action (content reflection or learning within meaning schemes) or where the action and its related factors originated (process reflection or learning new meaning schemes). When they consider a more global view of what is operating within their value system, the reflection is much deeper and more complex. It involves transforming a series of meaning schemes (premise reflection or learning through meaning transformation). Critical reflection is premise reflection that could transform a meaning perspective rather than a meaning scheme. Straightforward transformation of a meaning scheme occurs through content and process reflection. The profound transformation of a set of meaning schemes (i.e., meaning perspective) occurs through critical premise reflection.
Transformative learning theory has evolved into a definitive, robust, and applicable framework for describing how adults learn best.
The revised theory (Mezirow, 2000) defines four types of learning: elaborating existing frames of reference, learning new frames of reference, transforming habits of mind, and transforming points of view.
The new terminology includes the frame of reference, habits of mind, and points of view.
A meaning perspective is a frame of reference and comprises habits of mind and subsequent points of view. Habits of mind include perspectives that can be sociolinguistic, moral-ethical, epistemic, philosophical, psychological, and aesthetic. Teachers express these perspectives as their points of view, which comprise clusters of meaning schemes or sets of immediate, specific expectations, beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and judgments, which shape a particular interpretation and assign causality. Although meaning schemes operate outside of awareness, one can describe them in terms of what one sees and how one sees it, for instance, in cause-and-effect relationships, event sequences, or characterizations of colleagues or the individual. However, meaning schemes are habituated in responses that automatically determine a specific chain of events or actions unless they are considered through critical reflection and self-reflection.
To note, people can change their points of view by trying on another’s point of view. However, one cannot try on someone else’s habit of mind.
Mezirow (2000) acknowledged the importance of the affective, emotional, and social aspects of transformative learning.
Previously, Mezirow (1998) argued learning to think for oneself involves becoming critically reflective of assumptions and participating in discourse to validate beliefs, intentions, values, and feelings. Through critical reflection of assumptions, the learner looks back on something that occurred and examines the assumptions or presuppositions involved in the reflection (i.e., content and process reflection). Another aspect is critical self-reflection of assumptions, akin to premise reflection, that involves a critique of a premise upon which the learner has defined a problem, examining their worldview in light of their own particular belief or value system.
Citing King and Kitchener’s (1994) seven-stage adult learning development model, Stages 6, “abstract knowledge concepts that could be related,” and 7, “abstract knowledge concepts that are understood as a system,” taken together as describing critical self-reflection of assumptions.
Mezirow (1998) names the consideration of an assumption as objective reframing that involves either a critical narrative reflection of assumptions and requires critically examining something that someone communicated to a person or a critical action reflection of assumptions and requires critically considering one’s assumptions in a task-oriented problem-solving situation to define the problem itself.
A critical self-reflection on, rather than of, assumptions is named subjective reframing and includes one of four forms: narrative, systemic, therapeutic, and epistemic critical self-reflection on assumptions.
Narrative critical self-reflection on assumptions considers the problem applied to oneself, for example, by critically examining something communicated to her and resolving it narratively.
To self-reflect systemically is going beyond the action critical reflection of assumptions and requires reflecting on taken-for-granted cultural influences that might be organizational or moral-ethical.
Critically examining something communicated to oneself is objective reframing, narrative critical reflection of assumptions. Further, when narratively critically self-reflecting on assumptions by examining the communicated narrative as applied to oneself, it is narrative subjective reframing.
When critically considering one’s assumptions in a task-oriented problem-solving situation to define the problem itself, it is objective reframing, action critical reflection of assumptions. Systemically critically self-reflecting on assumptions by reflecting on taken-for-granted cultural influences that might be organizational or moral-ethical is systemic subjective reframing.
Reflecting on limiting beliefs, or examining one’s problematic feelings and their related consequences, is critical therapeutic self-reflection on assumptions.
Epistemic critical self-reflection on assumptions is investigating the assumptions and the causes, the nature, and the consequences of one’s frame of reference to surmise why one is predisposed to learn in a certain manner.
{Why do adults need to learn?
When we take on a new role or responsibility, aren’t we educated and socialized by our groups and communities? Say we become a parent; isn’t every wise person running to us to share their wisdom with us for our benefit, just because they are the community’s socially aware and caring pillars? When we prepare for a job, aren’t we trained in the skills needed for the tasks and relations? When we earn money and receive our paycheck, aren’t we advised about how to spend, how to ration, why to save, with whom to share, when to give, and what is the value of things?}