A Meeting with Lindy Garneau on her Research at Trent
Sitting with Trent's Aboriginal Councillor and Masters student Lindy Garneau in her sun-filled office, I had the opportunity to discuss with her why she has chosen to write her Masters Thesis on transformational learning, and why she chose Trent from which to base her research.
Garneau is completing her Masters of Education in Post-Secondary Studies at Memorial University. As a case study for her research, she is exploring transformational learning in the class INDG – ADMN 3040H, The Meaning of Work in the Contemporary World, taught by Professor Lorne Ellingson.
Although there are many definitions of transformational learning, Ellingson states that in limiting the term to a written definition, it takes the life out of it.
In a recent post, Ellingson has described transformational learning as changing behaviours in order to change our attitudes. It is stepping out of the norm – out of the routine and comfortable ways in which we perceive our lives – in order to move into a new conceptual environment.
If it is hard for you to grasp what transformational learning is, stop reading this article and take a minute to think about a moment in your life when you truly felt transformed. Some people call it 'yes!' moments. It can be very deep or very small, such as the overwhelming liberation felt the first time you drove in a car alone.
Garneau has experienced transformational learning as preparing yourself for the life-changing moments that you will never forget. It changes the way you do everything and the way you see the world. It is thinking in terms of possibility instead of a stagnant reality – because reality is always changing.
"A lot of it is belief in yourself. It brings a feeling of responsibility rather than inferiority – a feeling of self-worth times one hundred."
Looking back, Garneau can recount events in her past that point towards her calling: facilitating the navigation of students through their post-secondary journeys.
All throughout her childhood, Garneau and her sister caught frogs. One summer, she caught 300 frogs and collected them in a kiddie pool in her backyard. And then she watched them.
She was so interested in the metamorphoses of these frogs, watching it over and over again thousands of times. She never thought of it in a scientific way with a desire to dissect the frog and see how these changes were occurring. Instead, she remembers an overwhelming feeling of thanks as she saw the transformation as a miracle and the most sacred thing she had ever been involved with.
To Garneau, a frog is transformation embodied. From an egg, it becomes a tadpole, grows legs, arms spring out, it becomes a froglet with a tail and then a full-grown frog. Throughout this process, the frog becomes able to leave the water, discovering new ways to be and survive. As it grows legs, it even learns how to jump, expanding its territory for exploration into the air. But the frog never loses its ability to survive in any of its previous habitats. It gains new limbs, new skills, and can eventually do it all.
In her work with Trent students as the Aboriginal Councillor, she is watching the same transformation with the same enraptured sense of sacredness as students learn and grow in miraculous ways, and then hop away to accomplish amazing things.
Through her research, Garneau will prove how creating the space for transformational learning to occur in a university can foster this metamorphosis of students, allowing them to self-reflect and prepare for the success ahead of them.
Although Garneau is using the class to support her research on the benefits of transformational learning, that is not what the class is about. INDG-ADMN 3040H is not about transformational learning, it is transformational learning.
Ellingson says, "You can't study it, you live it, and then you don't need to study it."
Classes such as INDG-ADMIN 3040H give students the tools to live it, such as exercises to determine your values, your goals, the ways you perceive work, along with studies of exemplary figures who have accomplished extraordinary feats by thinking in terms of possibility.
Both the class and Garneau's thesis are crafted in an indigenous perspective, with a focus on people's stories alongside academic research. To accomplish this, she will be interviewing students in the current INDG-ADMIN course, as well as past participants.
Garneau does not want her thesis to sit on a desk and collect dust. As decision-makers tend to need to see things in writing, she hopes that an outcome of her research will be a clear demonstration on how transformational learning is positive. A recommendation she makes is to have at least one class in every discipline that focuses on transformational learning. She believes that this will allow students to really transform from their university education.
That is after all what we're here for, isn't it?
