• DOI:10.4018/978-1-4666-8265-8.CH005
• Corpus ID: 151603635

Informal Transformative Learning from a Life-Threatening Illness

@inproceedings{Hoggan2015InformalTL,
  title={Informal Transformative Learning from a Life-Threatening Illness},
  author={Chad Hoggan},
  year={2015}
}

• Chad Hoggan
• Published 2015
• Psychology

This chapter explores how a life-threatening illness, specifically breast cancer, is an important site of informal learning. Research literature on the psychosocial transition of breast cancer, posttraumatic growth, and transformative learning theory are connected. Based on research, a model for informal transformative learning is presented. Broadly, this model has three elements: Crisis, Coping, and Engagement. The model addresses ways that a life-threatening illness can cause acute challenges, and that transformative learning occurs when a particular type of challenge is particularly problematic based on the person’s habitual ways of thinking and being. The model positions this type of learning as an adaptive response to changes in a person’s physical or social context changes, as well as when her positionality is altered within existing social contexts.