Transformational learning is fundamentally concerned with construing meaning from experience as a guide to action. In his theory of perspective transformation, Mezirow presents a significant conceptualization of that process, but it is flawed in one major aspect: It fails to account for context. We examine the absence of context in the theory itself, then focus on the decontextualized form of rationality that underlies the process of critical reflection central to perspective transformation. Finally, we propose a contextualized view of rationality which maintains the essential link between meaning and experience.

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Narrative is on the move. Actually it' s been on the move for some time, but education, and more specifically adult education, has only begun catching the wave relatively recently. Of course, using stories to teach has always been part of the practice of adult educators. What is more recent is the theorizing of how we learn through narrative (Clark, 2001;Rossiter and Clark, 2007), but even that has deep connections to the core elements of adult learning theory, as we'll see. Our task in this chapter is to examine what narrative learning is, how it works, and how it can be used more intentionally and effectively in the education of adults. We hope to stimulate further conversation and thought about the possibilities inherent in conceptualizing learning as a narrative process. We begin with an overview of narrative theory, examine the connection between experiential and narrative learning, and follow that with a description of what we mean by narrative learning and how learning itself can be conceptualized as a narrative process. We then look at several examples of narrative learning in practice and conclude with some thoughts about the potential of narrative learning theory for the field of adult education. Fundamentals of Narrative Theory for Narrative LearningHuman beings are the creatures who tell stories-a point Fisher (1987) makes when he gives us the label homo narrans-and those stories serve a function, namely to make meaning of our experience. This basic idea has been developed by a number of theorists in recent decades (for example, 61 6

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