Research Program

The great American educator John Dewey’s work is focused around a simple, central principle: life is about having rich, meaningful experiences and expanding our future capacity for rich, meaningful experience. As educational psychologists, it is easy for us to get so caught up in the details of how learning takes places that learning becomes an end unto itself and we fail to think about what purpose it serves in expanding and transforming everyday experience. My research program is concerned with understanding and supporting this aspect of education, particularly in the field of science education. Specifically, my program involves 1) conceptualizing and illustrating what it means for education to expand and transform experience, 2) investigating factors that influence the degree to which education is transformative, 3) investigating the influence of transformative experience on learning and transfer, and 4) designing instruction that actualizes the potential of education to enrich, expand, and transform everyday experience.

Conceptualizing and Illustrating Transformative Experience. I have used the philosopher John Dewey's work on aesthetics and experience to develop the construct of transformative experience. Transformative experience provides a representation of what it means for science learning to enrich, expand, and transform everyday experience. Simply defined, a transformative experience occurs when an individual actively uses learning to come to more fully perceive and experience aspects of his or her everyday experience in a personally, meaningful way. This work has been published in highly respected journals (Pugh, 2002; Wong et al., 2001) and presented at a number of conferences. I have also conducted case-study research to further define and illustrate what a transformative experience is and what it is not (Pugh, 2004). In the last couple years, I have been working with a colleague (David Bergin) on placing transformative experience in the context of the existing research. Transformative experience is a holistic construct that synthesizes ideas from the fields of motivation, transfer, out-of-school learning environments, and aesthetics. One article we wrote (Pugh & Bergin, in press) reviews various bodies of literature that address the impact of in-school learning on students out-of-school experience. A second article (Pugh & Bergin, under review) examines the influence of motivational factors on the transfer of learning.

Investigating Factors that Influence Engagement in Transformative Experience. In addition to conceptualizing transformative experience, it is important to understand what factors influence whether students undergo transformative experiences or not. I explored this question initially in the case-study research (Pugh, 2004). This past year, I have worked with colleagues on a grant-funded project to explore the influence of motivational factors on transformative experience, conceptual change, and transfer in high school biology classes.

Investigating the Influence of Transformative Experience on Learning and Transfer. While I see transformative experience as goal in itself, I also believe that it may contribute to deep-level learning and have begun investigating this possibility. In an intervention study (Pugh, 2002), I found that fostering transformative experiences was associated with enduring conceptual understanding. In the study conducted this past year, we found that transformative experience predicted enduring transfer success but not enduring conceptual change (although the percentage of students undergoing transformative experiences was quite small).

Designing Instruction for Transformative Experiences. I developed an initial model of teaching for transformative experiences in science and found it to be more effective at fostering transformative experiences than a comparison case-based model of science education (Pugh, 2002). I have since worked with a colleague to articulate a general approach to science education focused on fostering transformative experiences (Pugh & Girod, in press). Currently, I am refining the model in collaboration with graduate students and science teachers as part of a research project.

Future Directions. In addition to developing the lines of research mentioned above, I would like to explore the role of technology in fostering transformative experiences. Concern is often expressed about technology replacing “real” experience. In some cases this concern is justified, but I also suspect that, when used appropriately, technology could actually expand and enrich experience. Early in my career, I had the opportunity to be involved in interesting technology projects (Pugh & Zhao, 2003; Zhao, Pugh, Byers, & Sheldon, 2002; Zhao, Byers, Pugh, & Sheldon, 2001; Zhao et al., 2001; Wong, Packard, Girod, & Pugh, 2000) and would like to revive this focus.