Transformation as grief?

As I was reading Brookfield’s model of transformative learning in Learning and Adulthood (p 146), it struck me that there are similarities to this model and other transformative learning models and the 5 stages of grief, as defined by Elizabeth Kubler Ross. While hopefully the transformative process is one of gain and enrichment, any time a person under goes a major shift in perspective, they do lose parts of their former self.

All transformative learning tends to begin with an event of some sort that the individual is having difficulty handling. Likely there is some element of denial as the individual tries to process the experience. Anger is Ross’s second stage. I’m not sure where that fits in to all transformational learning models, but I could see that be an aspect of some social emancipatory philosophy as the learner becomes more aware of the forces that work against them. In the stages where the learner is talking to their peers, doing research and gathering information, I imagine some of the research may be driven by a bargaining need (“maybe there are other options to this problem…”; “maybe this really isn’t happening”) that could also be accompanied by depression, as the learner finds their perspective shifting in a new and different way. Finally as they learn to integrate their new knowledge, there comes an acceptance in their new found perspective.