DOI = 10.

1177/1541344604267898
DOCTYPE = ARTICLE

Developing Authenticity as
a Transformative Process

Patricia Cranton
St. Francis Xavier University

Ellen Carusetta
University of New Brunswick

The authors explored the meaning of authenticity in teaching by talking to a group of

22 educators over 3 years. Educators’ ways of being authentic in their teaching moved
from concrete understandings of self, others, relationships, context, and reflection
through to multifaceted and integrative perspectives. The authors used transformative
learning theory and Jung’s concept of individuation to understand the development of
authenticity.

Keywords: transformative learning; authenticity; individuation; teacher development;

grounded theory

The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of

mere being.
—Jung (1961, p. 326)

The literature that guides practitioners in adult and higher education tends to
provide principles and guidelines for effective teaching without taking into ac-
count the preferences, styles, and values of the individual educator. Everyone it
seems is expected to devise clearly organized sessions, speak with enthusiasm, es-
tablish caring relationships with students, and create practical and relevant learn-
ing experiences. At the same time, however, it is acknowledged that people have
different learning styles, teaching styles, philosophies of education, and person-
ality preferences. It was this discrepancy that sparked our initial interest in au-
thenticity. How do educators bring their sense of self into their teaching?
When we explored the adult education literature, we found few direct refer-
ences even though authenticity underlies both humanism and critical pedagogy.
Authenticity is often mentioned in passing—Brookfield (1995), for example, ad-
vised us of the importance of being authentic in our role as an educator, and

Journal of Transformative Education Vol. 2 No. 4, October 2004 276-293

DOI: 10.1177/1541344604267898
©2004 Sage Publications
276

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 Authenticity as a Transformative Process 277

Scott (1998) listed freedom, democracy, and authenticity as the goals of transfor-
mative learning. Freire (1972) referred to authentic witness based on a critical
knowledge of the context of practice. Jarvis (1992) saw people as being authentic
when they chose to act so as to “foster the growth and development of each
other’s being” (p. 113). In a brief foray into philosophy, we found interesting al-
ternative perspectives. Taylor (1991), for example, was highly critical of the mod-
ern ethic of authenticity that contains the notion of self-determining freedom
where individuals make judgments for themselves alone without external impo-
sitions. These scattered and unsatisfying references to authenticity, especially au-
thenticity in teaching, led us to design a research project to further our under-
standing.
In a 3-year project, we worked with 22 faculty members from a variety of dis-
ciplines to understand how educators speak about authenticity, bring a sense of
self into their teaching, relate to others in authentic ways, and reflect on their
practice so as to become authentic. We traced the development of authenticity
over time with individual teachers, and we looked at the differences in perspec-
tives on authenticity between new faculty and senior faculty. A developmental
model of authenticity emerged, one that we propose is transformative in nature
and reflects the process of individuation. In this article, we focus on the latter re-
search goal—how authenticity develops in teaching.

Methodology

We chose a grounded theory methodology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to explore

the development of authenticity. Grounded theory is appropriate when working
in an area where little theory has been developed, and it is especially useful when
the purpose of the research is to improve professional practice. Grounded theory
research relies on inductive fieldwork, and the outcome is a set of categories from
which tentative hypotheses can be formulated for guiding practice.
In the study, 22 faculty from three university campuses participated over the
course of 3 years. Participants were selected based on recommendations of col-
leagues, administrators, and faculty developers. The main criterion for selection
was a deep interest in teaching and learning. Participants came from the follow-
ing disciplines: administration (business), philosophy, computer science, educa-
tion, forestry, kinesiology, nursing, English, biology, psychology, botany, classics,
and economics. There were 13 women and 9 men. Of these, 7 participants were
new faculty in their 1st or 2nd year of full-time teaching, and 15 were experienced
teachers.
We interviewed each participant once per academic term for the first 2 years
(a total of four interviews) and conducted at least one observation of teaching per
year. Interviews lasted between 1 and 1½ hours and were tape-recorded. In the
initial interview with each person, we focused on individuals’ stories of how they
came into teaching. Subsequent interviews followed an informal conversational
style in which we explored the concept of authenticity. Faculty members’ interests

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278 Journal of Transformative Education / October 2004

led the dialogue. During the observations of teaching, we took extensive notes on
the happenings in the class. This included such things as a description of the
physical facilities, how the teacher placed himself or herself in the room, details
as to the teaching methods used, the degree of interaction with students, the na-
ture of student questions and discussion, and any other observations that seemed
relevant to us.
In the 3rd year, we held four focus groups with 4 to 6 faculty members being
involved in each focus group. In the focus groups, we used seven guiding ques-
tions based on our preliminary interpretation of the data. The questions related
to self-awareness, relationships with students, learning environments, being in-
authentic, power, critical reflection, and changes in practice. The focus group
conversations were also recorded and transcribed. The meetings lasted between 1
and 2 hours.
Data were interpreted each term by at least two research team members who
then met and discussed their results. The initial interpretations focused on a
search for categories. The constant comparison method recommended by Glaser
and Strauss (1967) was followed loosely. At the end of the 2nd year of the proj-
ect, we had 15 categories from which we generated the seven guiding questions
for the focus groups. Following the procedures from grounded theory methodol-
ogy, we continued to collapse categories to reach a higher level of abstraction but
still maintain groupings that would be practical and meaningful for educators. To
search for developmental trends, we followed the transcripts of individuals over
the 3 years of the project and also looked at differences between new and experi-
enced participants.

Results

Because our goal in this article is to focus on becoming authentic as a trans-

formative learning process, we provide a brief overview of the conceptualization
of authenticity that first emerged from the data and then turn to a discussion of
the development of authenticity. The five interrelated categories we used to de-
fine authenticity were self, other, relationship, context, and critical reflection.

SELF
In a variety of ways, faculty spoke about their awareness of themselves as peo-
ple and as teachers, how they came to be a teacher, what that meant for them,
their values, their passions, the conflicts they experienced between the realities of
teaching and their values, and the ways in which they brought themselves as peo-
ple into their practice. Teaching was a passion for many. They spoke of it as a call-
ing or a vocation, as something that gave meaning to their life. Bringing one’s
sense of self into the classroom was important to almost all participants. Every-
one had stories to tell about how they became who they are as teachers, including
stories about individuals who helped shape their perspectives.

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 Authenticity as a Transformative Process 279

OTHER
Faculty recognized the importance of understanding others. They showed a
strong interest in and awareness of their students’ characteristics, needs, and
learning styles. Some participants also were aware of and concerned with stu-
dents’ personal problems and lives outside of the classroom, but others preferred
to stay more distant. Participants also sometimes demonstrated an interest in the
characteristics of colleagues or other individuals who touched on their teaching
but were not actually in their classrooms.

RELATIONSHIP
The most commonly discussed facet of authenticity had to do with the rela-
tionship between teacher and student. This was broadly defined to include help-
ing students learn, caring for students, engaging in dialogue, and being aware of
exercising power. Faculty talked about the nature of their relationships with stu-
dents, and many project participants struggled with where the boundary of their
relationships should be, especially in light of their responsibilities for evaluation
and grading. There was discussion of how open faculty should be about their own
lives in their interactions with students. Underlying many of our conversations
was an intense and powerful sense of caring about students and their learning.
We also found a variety of perceptions of how power contributed to or inhibited
relationships between educators and students.
Being involved in relationships with others (colleagues, family, and friends)
with whom they talked about teaching was also important to many participants.
Being able to talk with others allowed them to maintain an integration of teach-
ing, their personal life, and the rest of their professional life—something they as-
sociated with being authentic.

CONTEXT
The context within which faculty work influences their perceptions of them-
selves, their students, and their relationships with students. Context consists of
several levels, including the content of the teaching, the discipline, or subject area;
the physical classroom, including the size of the class and the room arrangement;
the psychological environment within the learning group; the department in
which people work and its norms and expectations; institutional norms and poli-
cies; and finally, the general community or culture and the roles people expect
faculty to maintain. The emphasis was more often on content, classroom and
class size, and departmental issues than on the norms and expectations existing
in the larger social context. Typically, faculty worked to create a comfortable at-
mosphere. Our discussions with faculty yielded primarily positive comments
about their departmental contexts in terms of the support they felt for being who
they were and teaching in a way that suited their preferences. At the broader in-
stitutional level, people expressed some of the usual conflict between teaching
and research responsibilities.

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280 Journal of Transformative Education / October 2004

Critical Reflection on Relationship

Critical Reflection Critical Reflection

on Other (Self)
Context

Other R Self

Context

Critical Reflection on Context and Environment

Figure 1: Model of Authenticity in Teaching

CRITICAL REFLECTION
Critical reflection was a strong theme throughout our conversations with fac-
ulty. Many faculty used the word reflection, and there was a sense that people were
critical of or questioning themselves, others, and social norms. However, at times
they were also relaying feelings, hunches, intuition, or insights from practice.
Critical self-reflection and critical reflection on faculty relationships with their
students were the most common, but participants also reflected on student char-
acteristics and the context of their teaching.

A MODEL OF AUTHENTICITY
In grounded theory research, the researcher offers tentative hypotheses that
integrate the diverse elements of practice and form a theory to guide practice. The
goal is to provide information that is sufficiently generalized and yet still yields a
“meaningful picture . . . that enables one to grasp the reference in terms of one’s
own experience” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 38). To this end, we developed a sim-
ple model (see Figure 1) that incorporates the categories generated from our data.
Our next step was to trace how authenticity develops over time and with ex-
perience. It is in this stage of the research that transformative learning emerged
as an explanatory framework.

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 Authenticity as a Transformative Process 281

Developing Authenticity

By examining changes in individual perceptions over 3 years and by compar-

ing less experienced to more experienced educators, we created a description of
phases of authenticity for each of the five facets. The phases are by no means dis-
crete, and individuals are not necessarily in the same phase for each of the cate-
gories. The patterns are general, and we present the descriptions as a way of un-
derstanding how the journey of becoming authentic may be transformative. The
newer faculty members (7 people) tended to be at the beginning stages of devel-
oping authenticity, but by no means were they consistently at the beginning level
within each category. For example, one new professor demonstrated an excep-
tional sense of self-awareness and was strongly critically reflective in regards to
his teaching. However, he showed less awareness of individual differences among
his students, and he related to students in a one-dimensional fashion.
All names used in the following sections are pseudonyms. Where necessary to
protect the identity of participants, we have also used more general terms such as
sciences or humanities rather than specific disciplines.

Self. In Table 1, we outline phases in the development of self-awareness and in-

clude quotes from participants to illustrate each. As is the case in the literature on
adult development generally (e.g., Levinson, 1986), the movement is from frag-
mented, authority-based perceptions to more integrated, constructed under-
standings of oneself. Less experienced teachers tend to separate who they are as a
teacher from whom they are outside of their practice and tend to see their teach-
ing self as an authority figure. Tom, a new professor in the humanities, tries to
teach according to what he has read, and Jake, who teaches in a forestry program,
struggles to find ways to make his classes “fun.” More experienced participants
did not make this separation, or if they did, they did so deliberately and after con-
siderable reflection on where and how they saw their teaching self as different
from their personal self. Mature authenticity also involved a deep and often in-
tense questioning of self. Carol, a senior science teacher, describes how she ago-
nized over a situation that arose because she was “just me.”

Other. The spectrum of awareness of others (primarily students) ranges from

specific, unquestioned perceptions where all students are seen to possess the same
characteristic to a complex, multifaceted awareness of the diversity of others and
a concern for students’ personal development. Lorraine, a young social science
professor, perceives her students solely in relation to their year of study, but
Ralph, who has been teaching literature for more than 30 years, is deeply con-
cerned that students get to know each other as individuals. In between are an un-
derstanding of individual differences in learning styles, usually related to the ac-
quisition of knowledge, and a consciousness of students’ level of development
and their engagement in critical reflection. In Table 2, we provide a description of
these phases along with example quotes from interviews with participants.

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 Table 1: Self-Awareness
282
Beginning Authenticity
Fragmentation of self—teacher self
separate from self. Acceptance of
socially constructed view of teacher. which one feels more comfort-
Views teacher-self as authority.
“I try to bring students into
discussion despite the fact that I
would be much more comfortable
just laying it out there for them . . . not very good at, and I’m very
because of all the studies
I’ve read.”
“[I change] a little bit. I am more
formal. Not so much now but yes
a little bit. I was more formal in
my 1st couple of years. I was
really formal. It may have been
because I was really fearful.
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Part of it is being young. You
have to dress in a certain way.
You’ve got to act a certain way
because I think there is a
certain amount of distrust there.”
Struggling to understand self
as teacher, noticing areas in
able teaching and areas that
are more stressful. Questioning
how to bring self into teaching.
“Now one of the things that I’m
concerned about, is how to make
the class fun and motivating . . .
I’m conscious of it and I’m
trying. . . . I struggle a lot with
it. . . . I’m searching for ways
that are natural for me.”
“But I find it embarrassing to
teach my own book. I just,
I don’t know. It’s crazy, I could
be earning ritaktues, for
goodness sake . . . I don’t know,
I’ve got to get a thicker skin.”
Integration of self and
teaching. Still some sense
of playing a role while
teaching.
“I like to use a lot of my own
experiences, it lets them know
I’m human. . . . I like to break
those barriers down, letting
them know I have a life too,
and I have something outside
of here.”
“And so then I try to take myself
seriously, that I really was a
professor, and that I had
certain things that I could
convey as a professor, and
that’s how students saw me.”
Mature Authenticity
Understanding of self both sepa-
rate from and the same as others.
Deep questioning of “who I am”
and “who I am as a teacher.”
“Looking back on it, after it
happened, I think I should have
been tougher, but I wasn’t. . . .
Anything I was trying, boy I ate
myself up about that, I worried
and worried and worried, and I
went to class with a knot in my
stomach, I never did come up
with a solution. I mean, it’s just
me, relationships are like that.”
“There is no reason for me to
pretend that I am all wise,
because I can’t pull it off . . . what-
ever that style and the tools and
techniques that work for me that
fit my personality and how I
relate to people and the students
and experience how they relate to
me. And be genuine with answers”
 Authenticity as a Transformative Process 283

Relationships. Faculty in the beginning phases of authenticity described their

relationships with students according to concrete rules. They saw themselves as
maintaining a distance, staying on one side of a line that separated their educator
role from their students or basing the nature of the relationships on their posi-
tion as teacher. They did not raise power issues, and when asked they said they
were not aware of power differentials in the classroom or they did not have
power, even though they also talked about maintaining control and authority. Al-
lan, for example, a young computer science teacher, had never thought about
himself as having power, and William, from philosophy, was clear about how he
controlled the class. Those faculty who demonstrated a more mature authenti-
city often emphasized students’ development through relationships. They were
conscious of how their own development was influenced by interactions with
students, and they expressed complex and sometimes contradictory perceptions
of their relationships with students. Edith, from nursing, saw herself as helping
students make fundamental shifts in perspective. In between these two points of
view, we found faculty who had thought about their relationships with students
and had a rationale for the way they chose to establish connections and those who
allowed for a variety of ways of relating to students in different contexts. These
points of view are summarized in Table 3 along with illustrative quotes.

Context. In the context of practice category, a diverse collection of factors

came up ranging from the subject area to departmental, institutional, and social
norms. Beginning authenticity was demonstrated by the individual having rules
about the context of teaching. Context was seen to be inflexible and unchange-
able. For example, David, from a business program, followed a guideline that re-
quired him to explain new material to students. Participants were aware of the in-
fluence of context on their authenticity in teaching but did not see that there
would be anything they could do about this. In the next phase, the awareness was
more complex but still maintained a cause-and-effect influence on teaching; for
example, if the class size were too large, then it was impossible to have students
work in groups. At the more mature levels of authenticity, participants ques-
tioned the influence of context, struggled with it, and looked for ways to chal-
lenge it so that they could fully express their own values and beliefs. For example,
Ralph, the experienced literature professor, challenged and bypassed policies on
dropping courses. These positions are summarized in Table 4.

Critical reflection. In Table 5, we describe the kinds of critical reflection we ob-

served among research participants. Everyone involved in the project engaged in
critical reflection on practice, but the nature of the reflection varied. Mezirow’s
(1991) distinction between content, process, and premise reflection helps to
frame these differences. Faculty in the beginning phases of authenticity tended to
focus their reflection on specific skills and to look for solutions to teaching prob-
lems: What is happening, and what can I do about it? David, a young humanities
(text continues on p. 288)

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 Table 2: Awareness of Other
284
Beginning Authenticity
Concrete, specific, unquestioned
perceptions of others.
“Sometimes we get some kind
of discussion going, but I
can’t count on it. It’s harder
with undergrads than
graduate students . . . you have
to push the undergrads to
talk . . . they’re a different species.”
“I always make a distinction.
To me it is a real distinction
between my first-year students
and my more advanced
students.”
“I think that one of the things
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students fear most is that
they will be shot down when
they answer something.”
Conscious of individual
differences and “meeting the
needs” of learners with different
styles and requirements, mostly
in relation to subject area
acquisition. Interested in
techniques to help students
learn content.
“I keep track of abilities in the class,
everything is set up into abilities. . . .
I try to be more interactive, pay
attention. . . . I’ve tried things like
this, walking through the class
rather than standing at the front.”
“I know what the principles are,
and I just put them into practice.”
Awareness of learning styles and
individual differences in general.
Conscious of others’ level of
development and critical reflection
in relation to not only content
acquisition but also personal
development.
“I think there’s a lot of social,
emotional, spiritual connections
that go on as well . . . a big piece of
that connecting is the synergy that
develops from getting to know
people . . . depending on the level
of connection . . . not only an aware
level, but sometimes there’s a
spiritual presence, so some of those
are really powerful experiences.”
Mature Authenticity
Complex, multifaceted
understanding of students
and their diversity.
Recognition of others as
individuals with unique
qualities but at the same
time aware of patterns and
trends.
“I’m telling you . . . we’re
very comfortable right now
because I’m telling you
something you’re interested
in. This is very comfortable
for me, I assume that it
probably is for you. . . . I
work a lot at trying to get
other people to take each
other seriously. I want to
be in a situation where the
information and ideas they
have about this poem is
actually of interest to
other people.”
 Table 3: Relationships
Beginning Authenticity
One-dimensional view of relation-
ships with students. Establishes
relationships according to rules
based on the position of educator.
Not concerned with power issues
or has not thought about power.
“I was a little shocked when one of
the students asked me about power, collegiality versus relationships and
and I had never thought about
power. I never considered
myself to have power.”
“It’s easier for me to be
objective if there’s a certain
line that doesn’t get crossed.”
“I’m very organized and I have
the expectations set up and
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they’re very clear. . . . I control
what’s happening in class.”
“So the relationship I try to
establish with them is a relationship
of comfort but still some recog-
nition on their part that there is
285
in fact a status difference.”
Has clearly articulated the nature
of preferred relationship with
students and why but not connected
to personal development. Aware
of exercising power, questioning
power.
“Yeah, just this whole issue about
friendships, I guess I don’t see it as
cut and dry, I mean I think you can
be very friendly . . . without having to that there are other ways to think
be their friend or deal with personal
crises or whatever.”
“I definitely think it is good if I can
develop a good rapport with them.
If they feel . . . that, they believe it light comes on. I spend a lot of
because it is true I care about them,
and that I want to know them
individually, and I encourage them
to come by my office.”
Allows for a variety of ways of
relating to students in different
contexts. Conscious of role in
personal development of students.
Engages in dialogue with students
and others about relationships.
“Making, helping students make
fundamental shifts in their
perspective and seeing them when
they’re doing that. Showing students
about things . . . I find that most
fulfilling and most rewarding.”
“It gives me a chance to . . . connect
with them . . . I like to see when the
extra time after class and in my
office. . . . They got really excited
and they were really pleased with
themselves. I really enjoyed that,
being able to catch them before
they gave up and help them
through.”
Mature Authenticity
Relationship that emphasizes the
development of others (not
only learning but development
of others’ authenticity). Aware-
ness of complexity of relation
ship with students, critical
reflection on issues involved in
teacher-student relationships.
Conscious of influence of
relationship with students on
own development of
authenticity.
“I want it to be really something,
that I have added to their lives.”
“So anyway, we talk about ‘what
brought you here, what are you
doing here,’ because a lot come
in thinking that it will be like
their diploma program, they’ll
be fed information, they’ll
write down notes, they’ll feed it
back . . . we just can’t operate
that way.”
 Table 4: Awareness of Context
286
Beginning Authenticity
Context is inflexible.
Black-and-white perceptions
of influence of context.
Rules and generalizations
about the influence of
context on practice.
“I certainly have found that
you’ve got to have some of
that [lecturing], especially
with a subject matter that
is unfamiliar to students and
it’s difficult in some respects.
You can’t expect them just
to read the articles without
having you explain a lot
of the basic ideas to them.
They just don’t get it on
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their own.”
Awareness of the many influences
of context on teaching and
authenticity. Perception
of a kind of cause-and-effect
relationship between context
and teaching. Does not think
it is acceptable to question
context.
“It’s more than anything else the
class size and the physical infra-
structure that I’ve found a bit
difficult [to do group work].”
“One of the things that bothers me
is classroom layouts. We can’t move
the desks. We were doing inter-
active stuff and I wanted people to
move, and the chairs were all
attached.”
Critical reflection and critical
questioning of contextual issues.
Challenging the “system,” not
running with the herd.
“One of the things I find hard about
working in an institution is that
my temptation is to break at
certain points, institutional
guidelines. Not literally but
theoretically in terms of teaching
things that are not taught.
Running classes in a different way.
Thinking of the world differently.”
Mature Authenticity
Deep struggle with issues related
to teaching context (e.g., holding
standards while respecting
diversity). Aware of complexity
of context, levels of context.
Setting one’s self apart from
context, understanding
separation of self from contex-
tual norms. A willingness to
buck the system if necessary if it
was hurting the students.
“There’s a date by which they
theoretically have to drop a
course or they get an F in it. I
think that’s garbage. It’s a con-
straint I work against. What I do
is I tell the students, ‘You drop
the course after the final exami-
nation, you decide you don’t
want to have taken this course,
I’ll write a note to the Registrar
saying you dropped before
the deadline.’”
 Table 5: Critical Reflection on Self, Other, Relationship, and Context
Beginning Authenticity
Critical reflection on specific skills,
for example, “Am I talking too
fast?” “How do I manage class
time?” Critical reflection takes
the form of “content”
reflection—what is happening?
“I still find more disappointing term
papers than I would like, and that
may be unavoidable, you know,
you do your best. What I’ve
recently started doing is have them
write outlines for me, that’s the
only way I could think of.”
“If I look back on my own
professors and see, well, which
ones were interesting. I like to
tell stories. . . . Sometimes I think they get the point? Did they get the
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my questions are obvious, but
then I find out they really are not
because my expectations are higher.”
287
Critical reflection on teaching,
critical self-reflection, questioning
of institutional norms. “How did
my class go?” “How can I make it
better?” “How am I growing as a
teacher? Is it right that we grade
on a curve?”
“I would like to think that I’m always
evolving and creating something
new. So I think I want to constantly
evolve and reevaluate and be
flexible, but I’m not saying that I
always am.”
“It’s mostly with evaluations that I
do myself, self-evaluations, that I
stop and think about things. Did
point I wanted them to get?”
Content and process reflection on
broader issues. “What does authen-
ticity mean?” “How did I come to
see teaching in this way?” “Am I
authentic?” “What can I do to change
the system?”
“It [authenticity], what I want to say
is that it is me as a teacher. Me as a
teacher, and not somebody else as
a teacher. But then I guess the
follow-up question to that would
be, ‘Well then who else would it be
if it wasn’t you?’ . . . I love working
with students. And it is trying to
bring all that to them. And that’s
pretty vague.”
“[Authenticity] develops over time.
Definitely over time. With
experience. With knowledge, with
the feedback from your students.”
Mature Authenticity
Critical questioning of premises
underlying conceptualization of
self, other, relationship, and con-
text. “Why is it important to be
authentic?” “Why do I care about
my relationship with students?”
“And now, I just sort of find this
whole thing bizarre because I’m
not sure what people think a
good teacher is, but I’m con-
stantly being treated, in this
setting, as if I know something
about teaching, and I really
don’t. I mean my definition is, if
I’m a good teacher, my students
go away feeling inspired and
wanting to learn more without
me. I mean that would be my
definition.”
“Those kind of norms [depart-
mental] are very contagious
because they are never focal in a
conversation, they are
assumptions.”
288 Journal of Transformative Education / October 2004

teacher, engaged in content reflection in looking for practical solutions to the

problem of disappointing term papers, for example. At the other end of the con-
tinuum, the focus was on questioning the premises underlying educators’ con-
ceptualization of themselves, their students, and the context within which they
work. Paul, a senior scholar in the humanities, demonstrated premise reflection
in his struggle to question the meaning of “good teaching.” In between, we found
people paying attention to how they came to be the teacher they are (process re-
flection). Also, the tendency was to think more broadly than the specific tech-
niques of teaching and to reflect on institutional norms and others’ expectations
of what a good teacher should be like.

Development of Authenticity in the Context of the Literature

When we began our study of authenticity in teaching, we suspected that au-

thenticity developed over time and with experience, and we thought that becom-
ing more authentic would be transformative. But at the same time, we were un-
sure of what authenticity meant, and we had little theory and no research to guide
us. Through extensive conversations with faculty and observations of their teach-
ing, we came to define authenticity as a cluster of values related to self-awareness
and bringing that self into teaching, understanding of learners and our relation-
ships with them, a positioning of ourselves within a context and taking stances on
issues and norms in the workplace and in our social world, and finally, engaging
in critical reflection on each of these components. Authenticity is not just gen-
uineness and openness, though that forms a central part of being authentic, but
it is socially situated. It involves helping others, relating to others, and caring for
the authenticity of others around us. And moving outward further, it involves
knowing who we are within our social world, how we are shaped by the world,
and how we position ourselves in that world. Being authentic is being conscious
of self, other, relationships, and context through critical reflection. As such, it is a
journey of transformation and individuation.

TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING
Transformative learning is a process by which previously uncritically assimi-
lated assumptions, beliefs, values, and perspectives are questioned and thereby
become more open, permeable, and better validated (Mezirow, 2000). People
make meaning out of the world through experiences. Frames of reference for un-
derstanding the world develop largely through the uncritical absorption of val-
ues, assumptions, and beliefs about how the world works. New teachers tend to
teach the way they experienced teaching in their past. Over time, through the ex-
perience of teaching, they may encounter the unexpected and begin to question
their previously held assumptions. This has the potential to lead to a revision of
perspectives and can be transformative.

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 Authenticity as a Transformative Process 289

In transformative learning theory, a frame of reference is a meaning perspec-

tive, the web of assumptions and expectations through which we filter the way we
see the world (Mezirow, 2000). Although it has been debated, central to
Mezirow’s (2000) conceptualization of transformative learning theory is critical
reflection. Teachers then transform frames of reference through critical reflection
on their own and others’ assumptions and beliefs about teaching. Although re-
flection need not lead to transformation, when it does, the frame of reference be-
comes more open and better justified. It is important to emphasize that this is not
about changing one’s mind or adopting the “right” point of view (e.g., changing
from a lecture method to a discussion method) but rather about becoming more
open. Critical self-reflection need not be linear, but it is a rational process of com-
ing to question habits of mind that have become too narrow and too limiting.
Critical reflection played a primary role in the way participants talked about de-
veloping authenticity. As illustrated in Figure 1, we found evidence of critical re-
flection on each of the facets of authenticity—self, other, relationship, and con-
text. Reflection was the primary means by which people changed their
perspective on these facets.
Mezirow (2000) highlighted the role of discourse in transformative learning.
Talking about teaching with others helps us to consider our own views in a new
light. Discourse is a special form of dialogue that has as its goal reaching a com-
mon understanding and justification of an interpretation or belief. People pres-
ent reasons for their beliefs, weigh the evidence given in others’ arguments, con-
sider alternative perspectives, and come to a tentative best judgment. In our
project, participants reported on the importance of discussing teaching with col-
leagues, friends, and family. Although it was not always described as having the
formal characteristics of discourse, these conversations shaped the way individu-
als understood authenticity. During the focus group meetings, we explicitly asked
how people changed their views as a result of participating in the research proj-
ect, and it was most often talking about teaching that was mentioned as an influ-
ential factor.
Becoming authentic takes place in a larger social context and involves helping
others become authentic (Jarvis, 1992). Daloz (2000) represented this view well
when he explored the nature of transformative learning that occurs as a person
develops a sense of social responsibility. Our social context plays an extremely im-
portant role in defining who we are. Daloz said that emancipatory learning is “not
about escape from but rather about a deeper immersion into the rough-and-
tumble of human relationship” (p. 120). Among those project participants whom
we placed at the mature authenticity end of the continuum, we clearly saw this
deeper immersion into the rough and tumble of human relationship. Some saw
their responsibility as educators being to work at both the individual and the so-
cial levels, or as Daloz put it, paying attention to learning for the common good,
not placing their own welfare ahead of that of the larger community.

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290 Journal of Transformative Education / October 2004

INDIVIDUATION
One of Jung’s basic beliefs and perhaps his most important message is that the
purpose of human life is to become conscious. Becoming conscious is to achieve
a balance, a harmony among the many facets of the self; it is the result of observ-
ing and reflecting on events instead of simply reacting to them. It is a lifelong,
continuous process of understanding who we are and why we do what we do. If
we are to maintain our self in our teaching, becoming authentic human beings
who teach rather than mindlessly following social expectations, we need to work
to become conscious. The newer faculty members, especially at the beginning of
the project, tended to follow what was expected, to implement the suggestions of
authorities on teaching, and to emulate their own teachers. Having no or little ex-
perience from which to construct their own meaning of practice, they went along
with others. As one person put it, “Part of it is being young. You have to dress in
a certain way. You’ve got to act a certain way.”
To understand transformative learning, several writers have turned to Jung’s
notion of individuation (Boyd, 1991; Cranton & Roy, 2003; Dirkx, 2000). Jung
(1921/1971) defined individuation as the process by which individuals differen-
tiate themselves from the general collective society. It involves becoming aware of
and considering the psychic structures of anima, animus, ego, shadow, and the
collective unconscious. People come to see how they are both the same as and dif-
ferent from others. Dirkx (2000) argued that transformation occurs through or-
dinary, everyday occurrences more so than dramatic “burning bush” phenomena.
Transformation through individuation occurs whether we are conscious of it or
not. However, when we participate in it consciously and imaginatively, we de-
velop a deepened sense of self and an expansion of consciousness. Transforma-
tion is the emergence of the self, and the emergence of the self is the development
of authenticity. As Tim said, “I struggle a lot with it. . . . I’m searching for ways
that are natural for me.”
For educators, separating from the collective of humanity means distinguish-
ing one’s own beliefs about teaching from the common rhetoric of how to teach.
This process is transformative; it is a reconstruction of the frame of reference re-
lated to the self.

INTEGRATION
In the development of self-awareness, we saw faculty move from a position of
fragmenting their teaching self from their personal self through to a better inte-
gration of the facets of the self. For newer educators, a teacher persona serves to
help them know how to behave in the classroom. This persona most often comes
from people’s experience as students and observations of teachers they admired
or learned well from. Many participants discussed role models from their own
student days. Personas are also based on collectively held social norms about what
a good teacher should be like. Wearing a mask or a persona, as useful as that can
be on many occasions, supports inauthentic practice. Through experience, edu-
cators are likely to encounter situations that lead them to question the value of

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 Authenticity as a Transformative Process 291

wearing that mask. They may, for example, as happened for one of the partici-
pants, discover that they are much happier teaching in a certain situation (for this
person, it was teaching in the field in forestry rather than in the classroom) and
realize that they are happier when they can be themselves. Individuation and
transformation lead educators away from the uncritical donning of the teacher
persona and to a more integrative way of being.
Not seeing students as individual people stems from a similar process. We have
socially constructed notions of what students are like, such as “students cannot
read and write anymore,” “today’s students are lazy,” and “students are only inter-
ested in getting jobs.” Faculty members who have less experience working with
students rely on social norms to define student and then use these norms to form
rules about how students behave. Through encountering students who are differ-
ent from this habitual expectation, educators critically question and transform
their perspective on students until it becomes multifaceted and open to the dif-
ferences among the human beings who are their learners.
This then extends into how faculty relate to their students. If they see all stu-
dents as having some set of characteristics and if those characteristics are objec-
tified and out there, it makes for difficulties in establishing relationships with in-
dividuals. There are lines, boundaries, and rules for interacting with these
cardboard figures. As the frame of reference for the concept of student becomes
more open and permeable through transformative learning, it allows for the de-
velopment of genuine relationships with students in which the educator makes a
difference in their lives and feels a difference in his or her life.
The context of teaching is inflexible and unchangeable when it is composed of
notions of collectivity. “This is the way it is here, this is how it has always been
done, this is what is expected of me in this institution, this is just what it is like to
teach mathematics”—habitual expectations based on the perception of context as
a collective restrict what educators can do. If, as was the case with some of our
participants, there is an acceptance of the idea that all philosophers (for example)
teach in a certain way because that is the way philosophy has to be taught, then
there is no room to bring personal preferences and ways of being into the teach-
ing. Or, if there is the expectation that the institution or even the academic world
has certain rules that one must live and teach by, authenticity is restricted. Indi-
viduation—distinguishing one’s self from that collective—allows authenticity.
The faculty member can see himself or herself as apart from but still within the
context.
Without exception, all of the research participants spoke about reflecting on
their practice. There were, however, noticeable differences in the nature of their
reflection. When faculty are focused on concrete rules about teaching or when
they are acting from a teaching persona and have socially constructed views about
the roles of teacher and student, reflection will be, naturally enough, on those
perspectives. As the foundations for practice become more complex and as the
sense of self becomes better integrated into teaching, reflection becomes more
complex as well. When people start critically questioning why they are living and

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292 Journal of Transformative Education / October 2004

teaching by rules, they have moved into premise reflection, transformative learn-
ing is possible, openness and complexity of perspectives increase, and there is
room for authenticity.
Transformative learning theory and Jung’s concept of individuation describe
people as moving from unconsciousness to consciousness, from black-and-white,
unquestioned formulations to complex, integrated, and ambiguous understand-
ings of the world. With each step of the journey, an individual becomes more
aware of who he or she is as apart from the collective, uncritically assimilated
whole of humanity. According to transformative learning theory, we become
more open to alternatives as we root out the habits of mind we have acquired in
our past, and our views of the world become more open and better justified. In
the process of individuation, we separate ourselves from the herd—we come to
know how we are different from and simultaneously the same as others.

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 Authenticity as a Transformative Process 293

Patricia Cranton is a visiting professor of adult education at Saint Francis Xavier

University in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her research and writing focus on transformative
learning, authenticity, and individuation.

Ellen Carusetta is associate professor of adult education at the University of New

Brunswick in New Brunswick, Canada. Her research interests include teaching and
learning in higher education with a focus on teacher development.

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