RESEARCH

ABSTRACT: Unlocking the transformative power of education can be enhanced through a bottom-up, holistic, personalized approach. However, educators are often limited in their ability to execute such practices, especially within educational institutions. This paper considers the misalignment between educational system elements at multiple levels, system stagnation, why necessary change efforts often fail, and offers a transformational leadership framework based on a complexity theory perspective with neurological considerations. Aligning leadership principles to the emergent nature of transformation provides a classroom response intended to maximize the educational effectiveness of formative change processes as students emerge toward their potential. While many factors contribute to educational complexity, this paper’s scope is a multidisciplinary consideration of the social and historical constructs of the American education system design compared to the dynamic and emergent nature of individual learners.

ABSTRACT: Schools, institutionally designed to formalize education, often leave individuals longing for something more. Multiple disciplines attribute the pursuit of something more to transformation. While a common discussion in academic literature, transformation is underdeveloped in education. This dissertation explored transformational education from a complexity perspective with neurological considerations while investigating the alignment of this construct with American teacher preparation programs. The study contributed to the literature by providing a conceptual framework, including a definition and seven dimensions of transformational education, rooted in the underpinnings of education as dynamic, complex adaptive systems. The study involved a two-stage exploratory sequential mixed methods approach. The first stage included a qualitative grounded theory method through which current literature from multiple disciplines informed the development of a definition, seven dimensions, and a 15-item questionnaire. The study then applied the qualitative findings to a quantitative nonexperimental descriptive cross-sectional analysis, examining whether American teacher preparation programs are designed to support transformational education. Ultimately, the mixed method study highlighted opportunities for educators to align more closely with the dimensions of transformational education, particularly by prioritizing neurological, mastery-based, personalized, holistic, philosophical, and wisdom-cultivating practices. 

Keywords: Transformation, Education, Complexity, Systems, Teacher Preparation.