At the Intersection of Education, Marketing, and Transformation by Sabra Brock (review)

At the Intersection of Education, Marketing, and Transformation is a collection of four published articles and eight papers and presentations authored and co-authored by Sabra Brock, a Professor and Interim Dean of the Graduate Business School at Touro College in New York. In the preface, Brock argues that globalization and technology have created changes in both education and in marketing in the past decade. Brock draws together parallels she sees between considerations for educators and of those for marketers in this changed landscape with the thesis that both can learn from one another.

The book is divided into two sections. The first presents research articles authored and coauthored by Brock focusing on the theory of transformative learning in an applied setting. Part 2 includes a mix of authored and coauthored case studies and presentations on both classroom activities and business methods. The book, unfortunately, is not actually divided into these sections with separate introductions or conclusions to tie the chapters together or to draw upon the overlaying theme laid out in the preface. Indeed, the chapters are not tied to the previously argued parallel between educators and marketers.

Throughout, Brock offers some definitions to underpin her arguments. First, she defines the goal of education as “to change behavior; students learn how to be good citizens and workers” and that, like marketing, education “molds behavior” (p. 8). This definition, which frames much of her argument for the first half of the book, is certainly not a mainstream definition of the purposes of higher education in the United States. Importantly, Brock’s definition is counter to the overall concept of transformative learning, which neither “mold[s] behavior” nor necessarily makes students into “good citizens and workers.” Rather, in the end, transformative learning expands students’ worldview, as proposed by Jack Mezirow (1978), sociologist and Teachers College Emeritus professor, in his 10th step. Mezirow’s 10 precursor steps for transformative learning include:

• • a disorienting dilemma

• • a self-examination with feelings of guilt or shame

• • a critical assessment of assumptions

• • recognition that one’s discontent and the process of transformation are shared and that others have negotiated a similar change

• • exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and actions

• • planning a course of action

• • acquisition of knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plan

• • a provisional trying out of new roles

• • building competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships

• • a reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s perspective

Brock cites Mezirow’s 10 precursor steps for transformative learning in all of the research studies she cites; but throughout the book, Brock makes unsupported assumptions about students’ motivations and expectations of their college experience. Quoting a 1994 academic article, she states: “Students expect that investment in a business school education will change the way they look at the world” (p. 45). This sort of assertion about motivations, purposes, and outcomes throughout the book does nothing to build a foundation under Brock’s arguments about transformative learning.

Moreover, Brock fails to tether any of Mezirow’s 10 steps to the questions asked of study participants about their perceived levels of transformative learning or describe background information about specifically related course assignments in the students’ academic programs, which she does not provide at all.

Brock includes the actual study instrument only in the final article. The theory of transformative learning is key to the arguments in her articles in the first half of the book, but she awkwardly defines it as “when a learner is struck by a new concept or way of thinking and then follows through to make a life change” (p. 14). Such foundations about education on which Brock lays her argument are largely opinions about the purpose of higher education. Importantly, her definitions depart from those of Mezirow, as well as definitions by other scholars whom she cites repeatedly in each of her four articles. To be sure...