Bridges and Fault lines in Freire’s Pedagogy and Mezirow’s Transformation Theory: Hegel, Theology and Teaching Adults1 Ted Fleming Teachers College Columbia University, USA Email: Ejf2129@tc.columbia.edu
Introduction: Auto/biography Jack Mezirow was my academic supervisor at Teachers College from 1978 the same year he published the first journal article on perspective transformation (1978b). The theory emerged from an empirical research project (Mezirow, 1978a) but also relied on the learning experiences of his wife Edee at Sarah Lawrence College, New York (Mezirow, 1981). Her reading of The self in transformation (Fingarette, 1963) influenced his theory of transformative learning. Fingarette explores ideas from psychoanalysis, existentialism and religious thinking and is one of the sources for the concepts ‘meaning scheme’ and ‘transformation’ (Fingarette, 1963, pp. 21-29). His selective use of sources (Fleming, 2018), that do not emphasise a social dimension, is the reason for some of the critiques of Mezirow’s work. It is ironic that, borrowing from Fingarette, who was engaged with mysticism and religion, Mezirow did not engage easily in the possibilities that emerged from the work of Dirkx (2012) on soul, Tisdell (2003) on spirituality, including others from the theological orientation of Freire (1974), and the work of Habermas (2008) reclaiming the role of religion in the public sphere (Portier, 2011). Paulo Freire (Freire Institute, 2022) also acknowledges the key role his wife Elsa and later Ana Maria Araújo played in his work. During a Summer School at Boston College in 1982 Freire introduced his wife Elsa as his collaborator, and the source of some of his most important ideas such as ‘conscientization’ (Fleming, 1982). All theory may be autobiographical; all research and
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Paper read at Hellenic Adult Education Conference/Webinar in Athens, Greece January 11, 2023.