Millie Randall

James Vandermey

English 111

23 October 2017

Critical Review on Dirkxs Nurturing Soul in Adult Learning

This article is written about the nurturing we as adults, and students want and need from

our classmates and is focused around a story he shares on a student who called him out for his

use of group work, calling it ineffective. He talks a lot about this encounter and analyses it. He

explains the importance of learning through soul and the environment it requires. He ties all of

these to the transformative learning theory and the work of Mezrow, Cranton, Daloz and Freire.

In this article he rambles on a lot but always goes deep into detail and fully explains his

perspectives. Although it is long, its worth the read if you had the time and were interested in

hearing an interesting take. Reading this article made me feel good. Its written from a professor

who seems to really care about his students and not only their success, but their feelings. He goes

deep into critical thought on students emotions and what we need not only from professors but

also fellow students. He feels attacked when a student angrily states she is sick of group work

and this sends him into thought on what we want as students out of the other students in our

group. He concludes that we want to be nurtured and supported by our group members, and that

this requires a particular environment.

However, this article seems to me that it would be more useful to educators than it would

be to students unless you were writing a piece based around group work, than this would be a

perfect source with lots of information you could use. The whole essay seems like an analysis

made by a professor for other professors to understand the needs of students.

 In conclusion I would recommend this article to anyone who needs a source for either

group work, or for anything having to do with the transformative learning theory. Towards the

middle/beginning middle he goes into detail on how this relates to transformative learning

theory. There is good information hidden in there that could be used for these topics. If anything

though, if you have spare time I recommend reading this if you feel like professors dont care

about their students feelings because it made me realize it's not that easy or simple from their

perspective, and that there's a lot of thought that has to go into their end when making lesson

plans and working with their students. I wouldnt ever want to make a professor feel the way that

Clara did.