Faculty and students in the Community and International Transformative Learning Specialization share a concern for education, collective action, social justice and planetary survival. They understand learning and teaching to be a complex, multifaceted social, economic, political, cultural, spiritual endeavour. They come from Canada and abroad and bring varied backgrounds in feminist, ecological, anticolonial, anti-racist, marxist/socialist, indigenous, popular, and holistic education, liberation theology, community organizing, and community development (for example) to a rich dialogical learning experience informed by critical analyses and transformative visions.
Transformative learning and education emphasizes the local and the global/planetary aspects of all these educations and recognizes the links between the varied issues they focus on and between the various regions of the world. The specialization offers an environment where students of diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives and varying levels of expertise can challenge and support each other to broaden and deepen their approaches as they undertake research and contribute to knowledge in particular areas at either the master's or doctoral level on a part-time or full-time basis.
Knowledge and learning /teaching outside the academy are honoured and emphasis is placed on building strong, mutually beneficial connections with diverse individuals, groups and communities in Canada and abroad engaged in creating and disseminating this knowledge.
Faculty in the specialization include:
Budd L. Hall
(Adult education and global civil society, Political economy of Adult education, Participatory research, Poetry and learning in Social Movements)
Angela Miles
(Community education, Development, and change; Education and Social movements; Feminist theory/analysis; Critical theory, Social analysis of advanced industrial society)
Edmund O'Sullivan
(Global ecological education, Critical pedagogy, Holistic education, and Community development)
Roxana Ng
(Race and gender relations,
Feminist and antiracist pedagogies, Community-state relations,
Phenomenology of the body)