Enabling Change

Through examples of embodied and learning-centered pedagogy, we discuss transformative learning of transgressive topics. We begin with a taxonomy of types of learning our students undergo as they resolve incon- sistencies among their pre-existing beliefs and the material they confront in our course on feminist ethics and epistemology. We then discuss ways to help students maximize their learning while confronting internal inconsistencies. While we focus on feminist topics, our approach is broad enough to be relevant to anyone teaching a transgressive or controversial topic. Students hold beliefs and values that conflict with many of the ideas expressed in the texts we use in our feminist ethics and epistemology course. The tension caused by this conflict, which we characterize as a type of incoherence, presents students with particular learning challenges. 1 In what follows, our first aim is to report our attempt to better understand these learning challenges so that we could properly evaluate the merits of possible pedagogies relative to student needs. Our attempt resulted in the taxonomy of learning that we present. Specifically, we differentiate additive from evaluative learning. Within evaluative learning we distinguish transformative from confirmative learning. Our second aim is to offer some examples of and reflections on the pedagogies we created to help students learn accurately despite the challenges we identify as associated with transformatively resolving the incoherence they experience among their pre-existing beliefs/values and the transgressive material they confront in our feminist ethics and epistemology class. In the end, we define, recommend, and provide examples of pedagogies that are embodied and learning-centered. We argue that these pedagogies enable and support students as they revise