The Phenomena of Transformative Learning in Prison

• In Event: Adult Literacy, Equity, and Social Justice

Abstract

This paper examines the prisoner and former prisoner as an organic intellectual and adult learner. Centering on experiences at New York State’s Queensboro Correctional Facility Adult Education Program as well as extensive research from the authors' book Gifts from the Dark: Learning from the Incarceration Experience, the session challenges participants to a new and transformed perspective of the prisoner scholar. Topics will include but not be limited to: prison writing, adult transformative learning, silence & solitude as teachers, emotional intelligence, body & mind connection, higher education and the prisoner as well as social activism. The paper challenges readers and participants to reimagine those who have experienced incarceration from a new lens and to understand that we are all prisoners of something.

Authors

• John R. Chaney, LaGuardia Community College

• Joni Schwartz-Chaney, City University of New York - LaGuardia College -