5 Big Things Transformational Teachers

Do
How many teachers have truly changed the way you think about a subject, or about life in
general? One? A handful? None? More important than the number of life-changing
instructors you’ve had is the method by which they changed you— because ideally, with a
little reflection, you can summon those same powers to make an impact on your own
students.
Below we take a look at what makes a transformational teacher according to today’s
educators and researchers.

What Is Transformational Teaching?

“We talk a lot about teaching that transforms— that is, teaching that changes people,
altering fundamentally the way learners understand themselves and others, the way they
engage in and contribute to their larger world,” says Debie Lohe, Director of CTTL. “But
transformation is a tall order…the word ‘transformation ‘can sometimes feel like an empty
signifier, like one of those cliches people trot out to make the work they do seem larger and
more significant than it really is…how does one move from aspiring to transformation to
achieving it?”

Lohe recommends starting with George M. Slavich and Philip G. Zimbardo’s review article,
“Transformational Teaching: Theoretical Underpinnings, Basic Principles, and Core
Methods.” Published in the Educational Psychology Review, the article “considers the
relationship between several teaching methodologies used by numerous faculty across the
country— specifically, interactive and collaborative learning strategies and transformational
teaching,” which they define as “the expressed or unexpressed goal to increase students’
mastery of key course concepts while transforming their learning-related attitudes, values,
beliefs, and skills.”

Inherent in their review is the notion that education should be “more about inspiration than
information.” And that applies to both students and teachers. A transformational teacher,
then, is one who “not only achieves transformation in her students, but who also models a
willingness to be transformed by learning herself.”

Slavich and Zimbardo present six core methods of transformational teaching that reflect this
notion:
1. Establishing a shared vision for a course.

2. Providing modeling and mastery experiences.

3. Intellectually challenging and encouraging students.

4. Personalising attention and feedback.

5. Creating experiential lessons.

6. Promoting preflection and reflection.

Slavich, who teaches at the University of Oregon, says transformational teaching goes
beyond both passive lecturing and active learning: “Transformational teaching is about
employing strategies that promote positive changes in students’ lives. The goal is not simply
to impart certain information to students, but rather to change something about how
students learn and live. If a particular lecture or course project excites a student so much
that he or she becomes and remains interested in the field of psychology, then
transformational teaching has occurred.”

But it’s got to be a lasting change.

“Transformational teaching… concerns more than just getting students excited about
psychology. It is about making lifelong changes.”

As a guide, Slavich proposes the following parameters for measuring transformational

teaching:

1. The teacher is conce ptualised as an instructor of the relevant material and also as a
change agent who guides students through the transformational process.

2. In his or her role as change agent, the teacher works to decrease students’ perceived
barriers to success while increasing their self-efficacy for change.

3. Teaching centres on the use of self-change projects but requires previous mastery of the
course concepts via other teaching methods.

4. Students are viewed as being capable of mastering the course content and achieving the
targeted changes.
Rosebrough and Leverett, two of the pioneers of the transformational teaching paradigm,
write: “Teaching should be about transforming learners through a synergy of academic,
social, and spiritual goals. Teachers need to consider their ‘value added,’ which considers
what difference they make in the learning and lives of their students. As technology
continues to expand and the rate of change increases, teachers can return to the question
of ‘why they teach’ in order to make sense of things.”

So how exactly does transformational teaching work in practice, and who’s at the forefront
of the movement?

How Does It Work?

In 1994 Erin Gruwell began student teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long
Beach, California. She was assigned low-performing students, including one who had
transferred to Wilson from a rival institution where he had allegedly threatened his teacher
with a gun. After her year of student teaching, Gruwell returned to Wilson as a full time
teacher, this time with a class of sophomores. Gruwell reached her students by asking them
to keep journals and make movies of their lives, and by relating the family feud in Romeo
and Juliet to a gang war. She also had the students read books written by and about other
teenagers in times of war. Writing journals became a solace for many of the students, and
because the journals were shared anonymously, teenagers who once refused to speak to
someone of a different race became like a family. All 150 “Freedom Writers” graduated from
high school and many went on to attend college.

In 1998, after teaching for only four years, Gruwell left Wilson High School and became a
Distinguished Teacher in Residence at California State University, Long Beach. Gruwell
later went on to start the Freedom Writers Foundation, which aspires to spread the
Freedom Writers method across the country. Gruwell wrote a book about her
experiences, The Freedom Writers Diary, which was made into the 2007 film starring Hilary
Swank.
Others have been following suit in their own way ever since.

At the University of Western Australia, Ben Jackson and his colleagues are testing the
relationship between transformational teaching and achievement in physical education. “In
the specific context of school-based physical education, a growing body of evidence
suggests that displays of transformational teaching are related to a range of adaptive
responses among students,” they write in a 2015 report in the Journal of Health Psychology.
“These include improvements in self-determined motivation, psychological need
satisfaction, satisfaction with the teacher, enjoyment of physical education, engagement in
class, as well as stronger intentions to engage in leisure-time physical activity (LTPA)
outside of the school setting.”
At the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota, educators are using
transformational teaching to bring the real world to their students.

“Looking back at my own experiences in teaching, it seems important to design the

moments and experiences where transformation can occur,” writes Virajita Singh, who
teaches and learns at the University of Minnesota’s College of Design and the Center for
Sustainable Building Research. “When we have experiences that touch our humanity at a
deep level, transformation is likely to occur.”
In four recent teaching experiences, Singh watched students at the University of Minnesota
go through a transformation of sorts:

1. “On a Global Seminar to India that focused on the sacred and the sustainable, a physical
journey, meeting and working with school children among the urban poor in India and
starting to build using local methods on a sacred site there were profound experiences.
Here, it was being in two completely different geographies and cultures of US and India with
radically different ground realities that triggered the transformation.”

2. “In a design studio and seminar course on homelessness I co-taught at the College of
Design, spending a day in the life of a homeless person, designing to meet the needs of a
homeless person in the street and then designing an upgrade for the space in a local
shelter, created powerful experiences. The students interacted with and had their own work
reviewed by homeless persons in Rapson Hall. Here, it was the encounter of an alternative
life, the meeting of and working for people that often exist as stereotypes that triggered the
transformation.”

3. “With a visiting Canadian colleague, I taught a design studio that brought graduate and
undergraduate students together to work with a local Mendota Dakota community. Here, the
impact of understanding history from a contemporary perspective, getting to know members
of a Dakota tribe, understand their traditions, being mentored in their skills, and designing
and building for their sacred ceremony created a transformational experience.”

4. “And in a recent design thinking based class I taught, freshmen connected to an

expanded view of design, engaging their own creativity and visited other places and units
within the university’s Twin Cities campus that supported creativity and design. Here it was
the on-going reflection across multiple contexts that led to transformative insights and
experiences.”
On that note, let’s take a look at some of the methods transformational teachers use and
why.

How to Be a Transformational Teacher

At Roosevelt University in Chicago, Steven A. Meyers studies the effects of transformative
pedagogy on student achievement. In a recent review, Meyers highlights how faculty
members who teach online courses can learn to transform their students. His
recommendations include 1.) creating a safe environment; 2.) encouraging reflection on
experiences, beliefs, and biases; 3.) promoting engagement and participation; 4.) posing
real-world problems that address societal inequalities; and 5.) helping students implement
action-oriented solutions.

Here are our top five transformational practices. What would you add to the list?

1. Let yourself be inspired.

Want to inspire your students? Allow yourself to be inspired by them. Imagine what a breath
of fresh air it is to them when you momentarily shed your authority and demonstrate that
people never stop learning.

2. Put theory into practice.

Too many courses focus on concepts and theories and never allow students to apply what
they’ve learned to a real life situation. Offer opportunities for students to put theory into
practice, whether in a local or remote (virtual) setting. This is a great way to solidify
important concepts in students’ minds as well, because they are more likely to remember
material with some sort of emotional and/or practical salience.

3. Always show that you care.

Researchers have found that the more a teacher cares about her students, the more
respect she will receive from them. Earlier this year, Utah State University PhD candidate
Andrew S. Larsen published a graduate thesis entitled, “Who Cares? Developing a
Pedagogy of Caring in Higher Education.” Interviewing twenty university students and ten
professors, Larsen was able to identify the following eight measures of caring as most
important in a higher education setting. The first was knowing students’ names.

“When you know a student’s name, you’re saying to them that you’ve made an investment
in them,” says sociology professor Faith Johnson, who was part of Larsen’s study. “You’ve
expended a little time and effort on their behalf. And that effort breaks out a chunk of the
wall that initially stands between professor and student.”

4. Talk openly about pedagogy.

Why is it considered taboo to talk with students about educational practices and policy?
Why do we treat students like their opinions on education don’t matter? It’s so important to
be open and to show that we value their input.

5. Give feedback that counts.

Grading is a time-consuming and not-entirely-pleasant process we are all too familiar with.
But it’s extremely important for students to receive more than a number in return for their
hard (or lazy) work. Try to move beyond vague or unhelpful comments like “more here” or
“unclear.” Go into specifics, and if possible, meet with students in person or give them
voice-recorded feedback.

4 Things Transformational Teachers Do

Transformational teachers create experiences in their classrooms,
melding the art and science of any subject and making their
students care about learning.
The key to transformational teaching is not reacting, but rather a grinding
obsession with analysis and preparation. Lee Shulman, as reported by
Marge Scherer, suggests that expert teachers -- despite enormous
challenges --demonstrate:

Cognitive understanding of how students learn; emotional preparation to

relate to many students whose varied needs are not always evident; content
knowledge from which to draw different ways to present a concept; and,
finally, the ability to make teaching decisions quickly and act on them.

So how do they do that? Let's break it down.

1. TRANSFORMATIONAL TEACHERS CREATE CONSTRUCTIVIST EXPERIENCES
Instructors tend to use one of two instructional orientations:

Transmission: Where "the teacher's role is to prepare and transmit

information to learners" and "the learners' role is to receive, store, and act
upon this information."

Transformational: Where students' active engagement in developing

knowledge and skills, critical thinking, higher-order skills, and communication
are facilitated by the instructor.
It is difficult to accomplish transformational teaching without understanding
and implementing constructivist pedagogy -- facilitating hands-on experiences
--where students construct meaning through active learning. However, the
checklist below suggests some tactics:

WHAT DOES TRANSFORMATIONAL TEACHING LOOK LIKE?

What Does Transformational Teaching Look Like?

PDF 455.73 KB

1. Have students ask questions and solve real-world problems.

2. Questions should require students to: analyze, synthesize, create,

empathize, interpret, reference background knowledge, defend
alternative perspectives, and determine what they know and don't
know.

3. Organize students into learning groups.

4. Make learning segments manageable through modeling and mastery.

 5. Guide, facilitate, challenge, and support.

Constructivist teachers focus on enriching students' perspective on the

content by facilitating rich experiences. These themes appear in a survey
conducted by Grant Wiggins, in which high school students were asked to
complete this phrase: "I learn best when the teacher . . ." One adolescent
wrote the following:

I learn best when the teacher is hands on and doesn't just talk at me. They
need to be interested in what they're teaching and encourage class
discussions. Not only does this encourage us to use what we learned, it also
helps us see the information in a different way.

2. TRANSFORMATIONAL INSTRUCTORS TEACH LIKE SCIENTISTS, ARTISTS, AND

ESSAYISTS
Transformational teachers know that artful teaching without science lacks
efficacy, and scientific teaching without aesthetics lacks vision. Says child
psychologist Dr. David Elkind, "The art comes from the teacher's personality,
experience, and talents. The science comes from knowledge of child
development and the structure of the curriculum." The art and science of
teaching work in harmony. Writes Richard Bankert, an eighth grade science
teacher, "The best teachers are artists who know the science of teaching."

In contrast to immature teachers who fill a 90-minute class with activities (and
ignore targeted objectives), a transformational teacher treats those 90 minutes
like a carefully crafted persuasive essay -- with a clear purpose and unique
sense of style, a memorable beginning and end, a logical sequence, important
content, nimble transitions, and contagious passion. Together, these
characteristics persuade students to believe that learning the content and
skills really matters.
3. TRANSFORMATIONAL TEACHERS MODEL SYMPHONIC THINKING
To be effective in advancing human potential, teachers need to manifest what
Daniel Pink calls "symphonic thinking" -- critically appraising and synthesizing
new ideas. Someone with symphony thinking skills is able to do the
following:

 Understand the logical connections between ideas.

 Identify, construct, and evaluate arguments.

 Detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning.

 Combine different ideas to form a new concept.

 Identify the relevance and importance of ideas.

 Reflect on the justification of one's own beliefs and values.

Nobody said this stuff was easy. But when teachers model symphonic thinking
and students internalize it, graduates are better able to thrive in the new
economy, according to Pink.

4. TRANSFORMATIONAL TEACHERS FACILITATE PRODUCTIVE STRUGGLE

It's hard not to rescue kids when they beg for help. But an instructor's altruistic
instinct can get in the way of learning. In a Wired Magazine piece, "Telling
You the Answer Isn't the Answer," Rhett Allain explains why letting students
engage in productive struggle is the unpopular and necessary approach to
instruction:

What if a person was having trouble doing a pull up for exercise? Instead of
giving them some other exercise, I could help them by doing the pull up for
that person. Right? No, that wouldn’t actually be useful. However, if I push on
the person's feet a little bit, they can still struggle and still exercise.
Warning: allowing productive struggle to occur consumes more class time. But
retention is undermined when learning is frictionless. Purposeful struggle
today means less re-teaching tomorrow.

Allowing productive struggle to occur, using artistic and scientific instruction,

modeling symphonic thinking, and encouraging students to lean into
constructivist problem solving can lead to the holy grail of transformational
teaching: epiphany. We hope you'll tell us about your transformational
teaching in the comment area below.