Transformative Learning Toolkit

Transforming Higher Education for Social Change: a model from East Africa is a rigorous methodology of pedagogy and curriculum redesign that supports lecturers to rethink their teaching and to become facilitators of student-centred teaching – helping students learn how to think, not what to think. This improved learning experience fosters the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and allows for practical learning beyond the classroom that can improve a graduate’s employability. The model has been specifically designed to support lecturers and institutions in low resource settings.

The Transformative Learning – Developing Critical Reflective Thinking in Learners workshop is aimed at academic teaching staff, who teach mainly at undergraduate level. Its goal is to promote a growth mindset amongst academic teaching staff and equip them with the necessary competencies to infuse critical thinking and problem-solving into their own teaching (and facilitation) practice and within the learning environments in which they operate.



Throughout the workshop, academic teaching staff are taken through a process that simulates the Transformative Learning Cycle, which they are encouraged to embed in their own facilitation of learning practice. Through the adoption of this cycle and Transformative Learning Pedagogy, academic teaching staff are able to create learning environments which move students beyond simply ‘knowing’ to confidently exercising critical reflective thinking and problem-solving in all areas of their life.

Students and graduates who possess these skills, capabilities and dispositions are more likely to demonstrate the ability and mental agility to create their own futures; innovating and creating new knowledge, becoming the changemakers they need to be, to transform themselves, their communities and the world for the better.

Our toolkits and online courses guide lecturers and institutions through a learning journey to transform their teaching and learning practice. Transformative Learning is the second step in this journey. Lecturers and institutions can follow the complete learning pathway from programme alignment to learning design, or engage with the individual elements that are most relevant to them.

To learn about the other stages of the learning journey, click here. To download a full set of PowerPoint slides for the workshop click here.