Facilitating transformative learning using Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects

What is it about?

Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects can be used to stimulate transformative environmental learning by enabling participants to overcome the grief, fear, and despair they may feel in the face of the global ecological crisis while animating a sense of active, empowering hope rooted in gratitude, compassion, imagination, community, and collective action. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from neuroscience, ecopsychology, and transformative learning, this paper analyzes how emotions may either impede or facilitate active engagement in ecological issues. The assumptions, goals, and process of the WTR are then presented in light of these insights. Finally a case study involving the use of the WTR with young adults along with their reflections on the experience are considered to illustrate how the process may be employed as well as to analyze some of the benefits, challenges, and limitations of using this transformative learning process.

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Why is it important?

This article shows how emotions can either empower or inhibit meaningful action to address the ecological crisis and provides concrete examples of ways to overcome disempowerment and to create a positive frame that stimulates engagement and action.

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