Teachers' affective domain and transformation in team-based learning

Teachers engaged in innovative professional learning and applied action research to investigate and understand pedagogical or school-focussed elements that they considered were problematic for their teaching practice or student learning. Along with the new skills and knowledge they acquired to inform their practice, the professional learning experience was a catalyst for multidimensional perspective transformation and the transformative learning some teachers realised. This qualitative, interpretive research problematised the phenomenon of personal transformation occurring for some teachers and explored a central research question: What are teachers’ conceptual understandings and affect concerning any transformative learning following a team-based learning experience?

Teachers’ stories reveal the affective associations teachers made and are described across the full spectrum of human emotion from fear to joy in their attitudes, values and beliefs, and motivations and transformative learning arising from their professional learning experience. The teachers’ transformative learning experiences unfolded in unique ways and revealed the relationships between action research for professional learning, affective dispositions, and transformative learning. Teachers described a sense of self and shared an overwhelming sense of empowerment from their personal growth and professional achievement attributed to their action research. The evolving theories of transformative learning inform my understanding and interpretation of teachers’ transformative learning and its relation to affect. This research contributes evidence to understand transformative learning through the lens of teachers’ professional learning in teams-based action research. It reveals teachers’ transformative professional learning can occur spontaneously in socially, supported situations created for team-based learning. The research has implications for teachers’ professional learning in the future.