The purpose of this article is to describe the successes and challenges of an innovative community engagement initiative in Bermuda, Education for All, in order to enlarge our understanding of how a community uses storytelling as a catalyst for transformative learning. Sponsored by the Coalition for Community Activism, community members and nonprofit groups united to facilitate an islandwide conversation about the student experience. They aspired to transform how people think about what constitutes an appropriate education and, ultimately, reframe the Bermuda conversation of schooling. We trace the evolution of the project attending to how adults came together around a shared purpose and vision for improving education. In so doing, we illuminate the complexities of using story as a catalyst for transformative learning. We provide a story circle protocol developed to gather stories of public school alumni. This story project for social change has implications for community leaders globally.
This chapter presents a case study that examines how the learning experience of graduate students enrolled in a seminar at a US university prepares them to conduct qualitative research, specifically data analysis. Adult development theory and literature related to doctoral student preparation for research and curriculum development informed the course design and data analysis. The research questions focus on course structure, pedagogical strategies, how doctoral students experience these aspects in learning qualitative research methods, and how faculty learned to identify and meet students' emerging needs. Findings include contextualized examples of how the course supported students, how students received feedback in developmentally different ways, and the role of student resistance and emotion in learning. This chapter highlights the need to create a context of supports and challenges for learners and illuminates the benefits of a constructivist curriculum with scaffolding for doctoral student development and learning to become a qualitative researcher.
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