Self-Transformational Activities for Secondary Education and Above

• In Event: Education for Inner Transformation and an Expanded Self: Paradigm Shift in Education

Abstract

Point of View

Self-transformation includes spiritual, emotional, social, and cognitive aspects. Teachers can foster students to undergo self-transformation through activities including: reading and responding to stories, news, and poetry about self-transformation; discussions, debates, multimedia projects, and student’s transformational autobiographies. Readings should be psychologically accessible, interesting, and diverse, about people such as Mattie Stepanek, American child philosopher-poet whose books on peace and self-transformation inspired readers long before he died at 14; Immaculée Ilibagiza, who survived Rwanda’s holocaust by huddling with seven other women in a tiny bathroom for months and transformed her beliefs and purpose; Myanmar’s Nobel winner Aung San Suu Kyi, “a prisoner of peace” for pro-democracy work; Austrian Viktor Frankl, who survived concentration camps and created a new psychotherapy approach based on this experience; and Wangari Maathai, ex-prisoner and environmental activist who became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Methods and Data Sources

Teaching about self-transformation for inner peace must be multifaceted, including several or all of the following: recognizing needs, understanding inner conflicts, facing one’s own shadow, seeing through new lenses, defining purpose, finding supports, and laughing gently at oneself. The presenters specify forms of training teachers need for successfully leading self-transformational activities.
Authors use a conceptual/theoretical approach and draw on their lives as teachers at secondary, postsecondary, and adult levels. They present their own experiences, offer examples of materials and activities, and discuss key success factors in different settings.

Conclusions

This paper discusses the process of inner self-transformation that can be encouraged in secondary, postsecondary, and adult education. Peace operates on multiple levels: inner, interpersonal, intergroup, national, global, and environmental. Inner peace, which is crucial for external peace (Gandhi, 1999), involves self-transformation. The paper fills a gap in secondary school education and above by looking into the role teachers play for fostering students’ inner transformation.

Author

• Rebecca L. Oxford, Alabama A&M University