Transformative Learning through Engagement: Student Affairs Practice as Experiential Pedagogy by Jane Fried and Associates (review)

In describing the world of writing on higher education, the adjectives "bold" and "ambitious" are rare. However, Jane Fried and associates' new work, Transformative Learning through Engagement: Student Affairs Practice as Experiential Pedagogy, earns them both. The majority of the book is a multi-chapter treatise by Fried, combining recent developments in neuroscience with constructivist epistemology, experiential learning, Deweyian philosophy, and research/theory on student affairs work.

When I read Fried's goal for the book, that "student affairs professionals will be able to understand and describe the processes of experiential transformative education to their academic colleagues and help design integrated learning experiences as partners with academic faculty" (p. 10), I scrawled in the margin: "too much?!?" I questioned whether this goal could be achieved in a book. The complex concepts deeply challenge accepted paradigms of learning and even the nature of reality. Yet they are also worthwhile and expand the horizons of learning in the collegiate setting. Whether the book will succeed in its goal is an empirical question—and ironically, the book challenges empiricism as a preeminent means of assessing reality.

In describing and linking the various principles of experiential learning (from the combined perspectives of philosophy, constructivism, and neuroscience), Fried does an excellent job of using those principles to engage readers. Her goal remains ambitious but not unrealistic.

After the foreword, the book is divided into three parts, the first two written by Fried and the third separated into chapters written by different authors. James Zull's five-page foreword to the book deserves comment. As both a professor of biology/biochemistry and the Director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve, his discussion on physiological changes in the brain as learning lends great credibility to the book.

Again the reader will note the irony that much of Fried's thesis asserts that the dominance of the positivist paradigm causes limitations in understanding, yet the neuroscientific knowledge gained in that tradition serves a key function in that thesis. I use the term "irony" and not "hypocrisy" quite intentionally: Fried herself notes: "Constructivism can tolerate positivism as one perspective, but the reverse is not true" (p. 52).

Chapter 1 asserts that the functional distinctions of academic affairs and student affairs is part of the institutionalization of the dominance of the positivist paradigm. The content taught by academic affairs is more likely grounded in that paradigm and privileged, whereas the experiential and interpersonal content of student affairs pedagogy is devalued.

In Chapter 2 she describes the stunning parallels between the current research on experiential learning and neuroscience and begins an impressive effort to explain constructivism. However, the content of Chapters 3-5 blur. Fried's discussion, from my perspective, reviews each of several key concepts in constructivism, including the importance of perspective, paradigms, lenses, and making meaning of experience multiple times.

This is not to say that the chapters are repetitive. Fried spends a great deal of time teaching these foundational, but deeply complex and challenging, concepts. I say "complex" because they are difficult to grasp. I say "challenging" because they will powerfully and sometimes frighteningly confront the worldviews of the reader. The space Fried takes is well used. She covers a concept and circles back to it from a different perspective with new examples. Throughout the discussion, Fried comments on American socio-cultural and educational histories and on their role in reinforcing the positivist paradigm.

Regardless, as an excellent educator, she is essentially employing a constructivist paradigm in writing about (teaching) the meaning of constructivism. Fried's political leanings shine through at times, perhaps overmuch, as they may distract the reader from the central themes of the book.

Part 2, consisting of Chapters 6 and 7, moves in step with experiential learning theory by asking readers to engage more deeply by "cocreating [their] understanding and learning experience so [they] can...