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The Ethics of Radical and Transformative Education

Chad Hoggan https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7759-591X [email protected] and Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3316-6491View all authors and affiliations
Volume 73, Issue 4
https://doi.org/10.1177/07417136231187840

Abstract

This article presents a framework for ethics for radical and transformative education. Taking as a starting point ethical perspectives by which educators of adults are justified in imposing upon, coercing, and manipulating adult learners in the name of social justice, this article highlights the necessary connection between pedagogies and learning outcomes. It positions democracy, with its concomitant respect for human dignity, as the raison d'être of the field of adult education. Therefore, adult education practice should support democratic capabilities, respect learner autonomy, and allow for plurality. From both consequentialist and deontological ethical perspectives, it is argued that methods of instruction that undermine democracy cannot also be claimed to support democracy.

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Biographies

Chad Hoggan is an associate professor of Adult and Lifelong Education at North Carolina State University, co-editor of the Journal of Transformative Education, and co-director of the Institute for Civic Studies and Learning for Democracy. His research addresses learning and change during major life and societal transitions.
Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert is an Akademische Rätin (associate professor) in the Chair of Adult Education at the University of Augsburg, Germany and co-editor of the International Journal of Lifelong Education. She researches migration and civic education (and indoctrination) in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the United States. She is co-director of the Institute for Civic Studies and Learning for Democracy, as well as founder and director of the NGO German-Ukrainian Dialogue, which aims to create spaces of encounter and democratic supportive structures for those in vulnerable positions.
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