Fostering Transformative Learning through EFL Learners’ Real-Life Experiences: Associating Words to the World

Transformative learning is a process of revision in the way learners make sense of their experiences. This qualitative study seeks to investigate how EFL learners’ life experiences prompt them to engage in transformative learning and to explore the learners’ account of willingness or resistance to perspective changes. To this end, 126 Iranian EFL learners were recruited through purposive sampling. Two instruments, including narrative writing and a distance semi-structured interview, were used for data collection. Thematic analysis of the learners’ narrative writings revealed that the learners experienced TL through having good or bad experiences, unexpected events, moving to a new place, relationships and support of others, contemplating, examining, and searching for the truth of the notions in the world. Moreover, both learners’ own experiences and those of others facilitated the development of awareness, confidence, and the capability to create a new meaning from an experience, which in turn enhanced the potential for transformative learning. Thematic analysis of interviews with 20 students demonstrated ‘convincing with valid evidence’ as the most critical factor behind perspective change. Factors that accounted for EFL learners’ resistance to perspective change included fear, pride, experience, and the character of the person, the event, and the context.