This critique is a process of a personal re-reading and re-working of ideas from several texts, drawing from several voices of prominent transformative learning theorists in the past twenty years. It is written in the form of a dialogue between myself and the texts. The critique makes use of a number of styles: a critique of arguments (part one), an overview of main ideas in terms of how they could be applied to my own teaching practice (part two), and a dialogue between myself, John Dirkx, and Jack Mezirow (Dirkx, Mezirow, Cranton, 2006).

These five articles were chosen as representative of key issues and controversies in academic circles about transformation theory. By choosing these five articles for critique, I hope to provide a more in-depth analysis of the key concepts of transformative learning theory. This particular theory is quite relevant for my professional context as an adult literacy educator. I am investigating instructional strategies to better assist and empower First Nations learners whose emotional experiences about mainstream education have been in many cases characterized by anxiety and frustration, coercion and dependency.  It is time to redress this harm, and provide more holistic, transformative learning experiences. This is not just a necessity for First Nations adult learners in adult education programs, but for all adult learners returning to adult literacy programs.