Transformative Learning-Personal Narrative Analysis

For Christmas 1969, I received a 22- inch bicycle with training wheels that I named Starr. It was the only gift I received that Christmas because my family was struggling to stay financially afloat with a failing hardware store in a small Iowa town. I have no recollection of what my sister received that year as all of my eight-year-old attention was focused on that bike. My first mounting of Starr was easy; it was as if we had been born to ride together. She tilted slightly to the left as I leaned on the training wheel. Starr meant a certain level of independence from a family that was worried constantly about money and a business; she was my escape mechanism, and, over the course of that winter and spring, I rode all over town. Every day …show more content…
35), this new interpretation can be applied to something as literal as riding a bike and leaning on the safety of training wheels, or the perceived intuition of a society’s set of expectations for a gender that invalidates learning. Indeed, this social construct of inequality for women’s education continues to be a highly debatable topic. While transformative learning clearly defines experiences as a methods for learning, strengthening connections, and advocating adult decision making processes, a disconnect can form when the original intent of learning is devalued in childhood. Inasmuch as “a crucial dimension of adult learning involves the process of justifying or validating communicated ideas and the presupposition of prior learning” (Mezirow, 1991, p.5); finding validation can provide a significant challenge for adult students who must transform years of silence into articulate participation within the classroom. It can be done; I am one who has met this challenge and reclaimed distorted and antiquated social mores and experiences by transforming them into a different future replete with new behaviors, new challenges, and new