Book Review: Transforming Learning: individual and global change

Transforming Learning: individual and global changeSUSAN ASKEW & EILEEN CARNELL, 1998London: Cassell (Institute of Education Series).197 pp., ISBN 0 304 33990 3, paperback, £16.99

This book sets out to promote a ‘radical new approach’ to learning, the ‘transformatory approach’. The authors link this to the current trend for ‘global change’ on the somewhat dubious view that individual change can promote change in institutions and societies...
Nevertheless, the model of holistic learning to enthuse, motivate and inspire children and young people is one of which I and many others wholeheartedly approve. This book is a useful discussion of this position. It could be used with students involved on qualitative and action research projects to give them an understanding of the breadth of what is meant by learning (in the fact of the crude measures popularised by league tables). It also gives a useful discussion of the management of change, showing how changes of attitude and culture are central in institutional change. But readers beware: the approach is not new and the effects are not demonstrated to be global.