A Review of Academic Paper
The article authored by Kaisu Malkki (2012) titled “Rethinking Disorienting Dilemmas Within Real-Life Crises: The Role of Reflection in Negotiating Emotionally Chaotic Experiences” is an insightful piece about the role of various emotional experiences that enable meaning-making during chaotic situations. Through an exploration of a life-changing crisis that happened among childless women in Finland, he argued that the ideas contained in Jack Mezirow’s theory of transformational learning could be inadequate and needs to be examined further. Such proposal for revisiting the features of the theory is triggered by the growing empirical research that points to the complicated relationship between cognition and emotion.
Involuntary childlessness is a life-changing event. For Malkki, such a crisis is an apparent manifestation of a disorienting dilemma. Mezirow earlier theorised that reflection is triggered by such dilemma, where a growing sense of dissatisfaction results to a cognitive conflict that gives way to reflection and learning. Malkki’s analysis shows that in nonfacilitated contexts like the one she studied, one should not downplay the role of emotional experiences. The theory of transformative learning stresses that adults “discover a need to acquire new perspectives in order to gain a more complete understanding of changing events”. The new context creates a chaotic situation that could no longer be explained by existing mental frameworks. This emphasises the rational aspect of reflection, where epistemic assumptions are being reassessed through dialogue, which will then lead to a recognition of one’s discontent with existing frameworks and a desire to negotiate changes by exploring options for new roles and relationships.
In this research, seeing and living through the new perspective that one has to accept involuntary childlessness involves the “letting go of the previous interpretation and opening oneself to new ways of thinking about issues may enable one to relieve the chaotic feeling and anxiety” (220). One could see parallels with Mezirow’s (2000) descriptions of considering explanations given by figures of authority or resorting to rationalisation to create imaginary meanings and relieve one from the chaotic situation. However, the subject is very well grounded in the sense that reality is taken into account. As the feelings grew more unpleasant, subscribing to the old viewpoint is no longer rewarding. This is illustrated by the following quote:
“The treatments were entered with an expectation of the possibility of having a child. However, as the treatment continued, various unexpected experiences arose, which had, perhaps, previously appeared insignificant. Among others, the uncertainty, waiting, pain, anxiety, and hormonal side effects resulted in the negative experiences and emotions coming to prevail.”
Contemporary research in the realm of neuroscience and cognitive psychology suggests that implicit memory — which receives, stores, and retrieves outside the conscious working memory of a person — elicit a conditioned response to emotions (such as fear) and it guides individual action in certain situations (Taylor, 2001). This seems to imply that greater self- understanding can occur through a variety of means, rather than just rational discourse and critical reflection. For example, most of us have an implicit memory of riding a bicycle, yet attempting to explain it will result to a disruption of automatic behaviour. We have evolved to develop more or less separate functions for emotions and reason, which are integrated through interacting systems in the brain.
We are active meaning-makers of the world around us. Our ability of immediate self-awareness, recognizing a feeling as it happens, can provide a basis for encouraging greater creativity in the practise of fostering transformative learning. A disorienting dilemma, as it appears to be an emotional experience, spurs reflection that is instrumental in working through such an experience. While our habits and biases could stall us from learning new ways of thinking, identifying problematic ideas through communication and critical examination of assumptions is not enough. Disorienting dilemmas come naturally in nonfacilitated contexts, like the example in the Malkki paper. The challenge is to guide transformative educators in facilitated contexts in managing the emotional nature of learning.
References
Mälkki, K. (2011). Rethinking Disorienting Dilemmas Within Real-Life Crises. Adult Education Quarterly, 62(3), 207–229.
Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning to think like an adult. Core concepts of transformation theory. In J. Mezirow & Associates (Eds.), Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress (pp. 3–33). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Taylor, E. (2001). Transformative learning theory: a neurobiological perspective of the role of emotions and unconscious ways of knowing, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 20:3, 218–236.
