2019 Annual Conference

Adult Development

Shared Concurrent Session (Approx. 12 or 20 minutes)

This session aims to explore the relationship between transformative learning and volunteering. Volunteering provides a rich forum for individual to examine one’s identity, privilege, and role in the society. That is, volunteering may afford transformative learning experience that helps individual to achieve a shift in one’s assumptions through critical self-reflection.

Educators and researchers interested in facilitating transformative learning in and out of classrooms, educators working in volunteer-based organizations

The purpose of this session is to discuss the application of transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1997) in understanding volunteering experience and volunteer learning. Based on an integrative literature review, this session will explore the process of transformation from the perspective of volunteers, the personal and organizational characteristics affecting individual’s participation in learning, and transformative learning outcome.

Voluntary organizations provide an important context for adult learning and adult development. However, volunteers often do not realize the scope and intensity of their learning until they are given opportunities to recount what they have accomplished. Scholars have noted the possibility that volunteering experience may have transformative impact (Hullender, Hinck, Wood-Nartker, Burton & Bowlby, 2015). For many individuals, volunteering provides an important opportunity to understand the reality and challenges faced by socially marginalized groups (Schugurensky, 2013). Such experiences provide volunteers’ opportunities to “understand themselves better through provoking such personal questions as ‘what I want to do,’ ‘what I really care about’ and ‘who I want to be’” (Narushima, 2005, p.578). Volunteering provides a rich forum for individual to examine one’s identity, privilege, and role in the society. That is, volunteering may afford transformative learning experience that helps individual to achieve a shift in one’s assumptions and world beliefs through critical self-reflection. This session is based on an integrative literature on transformative learning through volunteering. It hopes to invite scholars and practitioners to consider the recognition and facilitation of learning through volunteering.

This session will start with an introduction to trends in volunteering and volunteering research. The procedures and selection criteria for the literature review would be explained. The findings from the literature review will be organized into three segments: theoretical frameworks, methodologies and settings, and evidence of transformative learning through volunteering.