Saskia Eschenbacher
Biographic Data
| ID | 1548081 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Saskia Eschenbacher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Saskia |
| FAMILY NAME | Eschenbacher |
| SIGNATURE | ESCHENBACHER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Education, Akkon University of Applied Human Sciences, Berlin, Germany |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3460-3881 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Between Surviving and Thriving—New Approaches to Understanding Learning for Transformation
Background: Paramedics and firefighters frequently encounter critical incidents that require both deep learning and emotional processing. This study investigates how reflective writing facilitates these processes, addressing the need to understand professional development in high-stress environments. Methods: The research analyzed reflective writings from 57 second-year Management of Catastrophe Defense undergraduates who were active emergency se…
Saving lives: An unsustainable profession – a study of transformative learning at work
The emergency industry has always been an important and challenging profession. Paramedics and firefighters are exposed on a daily basis to potentially traumatic situations with some of what they experience leading to transformations, changing them deeply and fundamentally. These transformative experiences (Paul [2016]. Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press) where they are required to navigate life and death as part of their …
Period poverty – Fostering gender equality through transformative learning
Period poverty is a global phenomenon that affects billions of people, particularly menstruators from developing countries, low-income families, and marginalised communities who lack access to sanitary products, education on healthy period management practices, and basic water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities to manage their periods with dignity. This results in stigma, shame, limited educational and socio-economic opportunities as well a…
Deconstructing gender identity through transformative learning
The theory of transformative learning and its notion of freedom, that we are not trapped by one way of looking at the world or being in the world, fosters a fundamental re-ordering and radical questioning of how one thinks or acts. As a theory of adult learning, it emerged from the women's movement in the US, echoing what it means to become a transformation learner, realising how societal norms and expectations due to gender roles have defined an…
Facing Crises of Unsustainability: Creating and Holding Safe Enough Spaces for Transformative Learning in Higher Education for Sustainable Development
The multiple crises of unsustainability are provoking increasing stress and unpleasant emotions among students. If higher education is to fulfill its mission to support transformation processes toward sustainable development, it must adapt its pedagogical approaches to help students deepen their critical thinking and empower them to engage in these transformation processes. For this reason, emotions – which can also prevent critical thinking – sh…
Towards a Pedagogy of Trauma: Experiences of Paramedics and Firefighters in a Covid-19 Era and Opportunities for Transformative Learning
Many workers, especially first responders, experience trauma at work. We gathered experiences of frontline workers in Berlin during COVID-19 and theorize those experiences within an education paradigm. Their experiences were written as part of their reflective writing on a hazard prevention course for emergency workers in 2022. The theorizing focuses on the struggle for meaning precipitated by the student’s experiences of trauma and makes a case …
Toward a critical pedagogy of crisis
Crises in our society – climate, covid-19 and mass migration – seem to define not only the experience of learning but also the experience of living and even surviving that in turn have implications for adult learning. We explore the concept of experience and examine whether it plays a role in addressing the need for transformative learning. Our allies in this task are Oskar Negt from the Frankfurt School tradition, L. A. Paul from a philosophical…
Transformative learning theory and migration: Having transformative and edifying conversations
This paper introduces the concept of transformative conversation inspired by Arcillas concept of edifying conversation, as an extension of TL theorys notion of discourse, in the context of adult education and migration. By contrasting the idea of exchanging arguments with opening space for conversation and ones private quest for meaning and self-understanding, I introduce the idea of becoming a fellow transformative conversationalist as an approp…
Transformative dimensions of lifelong learning: Mezirow, Rorty and Covid-19
COVID-19 has done significant damage to individuals, families, workers and the economy. What is not known about the virus is part of the problem, and the knowledge gap drives an unprecedented and urgent search for knowledge. This article explores the challenges for lifelong learning and the relevance of transformative learning. Disorientation, disorienting dilemmas and critical reflection are the ingredients of such learning, since we can only le…
Transformative dimensions of lifelong learning: Mezirow, Rorty and Covid-19
COVID-19 has done significant damage to individuals, families, workers and the economy. What is not known about the virus is part of the problem, and the knowledge gap drives an unprecedented and urgent search for knowledge. This article explores the challenges for lifelong learning and the relevance of transformative learning. Disorientation, disorienting dilemmas and critical reflection are the ingredients of such learning, since we can only le…
Transformative learning theory and migration: Having transformative and edifying conversations
This paper introduces the concept of transformative conversation inspired by Arcillas concept of edifying conversation, as an extension of TL theorys notion of discourse, in the context of adult education and migration. By contrasting the idea of exchanging arguments with opening space for conversation and ones private quest for meaning and self-understanding, I introduce the idea of becoming a fellow transformative conversationalist as an approp…
Transformative dimensions of lifelong learning: Mezirow, Rorty and Covid-19
COVID-19 has done significant damage to individuals, families, workers and the economy. What is not known about the virus is part of the problem, and the knowledge gap drives an unprecedented and urgent search for knowledge. This article explores the challenges for lifelong learning and the relevance of transformative learning. Disorientation, disorienting dilemmas and critical reflection are the ingredients of such learning, since we can only le…
Toward a critical pedagogy of crisis
Crises in our society – climate, covid-19 and mass migration – seem to define not only the experience of learning but also the experience of living and even surviving that in turn have implications for adult learning. We explore the concept of experience and examine whether it plays a role in addressing the need for transformative learning. Our allies in this task are Oskar Negt from the Frankfurt School tradition, L. A. Paul from a philosophical…
Facing Crises of Unsustainability: Creating and Holding Safe Enough Spaces for Transformative Learning in Higher Education for Sustainable Development
The multiple crises of unsustainability are provoking increasing stress and unpleasant emotions among students. If higher education is to fulfill its mission to support transformation processes toward sustainable development, it must adapt its pedagogical approaches to help students deepen their critical thinking and empower them to engage in these transformation processes. For this reason, emotions – which can also prevent critical thinking – sh…
Towards a Pedagogy of Trauma: Experiences of Paramedics and Firefighters in a Covid-19 Era and Opportunities for Transformative Learning
Many workers, especially first responders, experience trauma at work. We gathered experiences of frontline workers in Berlin during COVID-19 and theorize those experiences within an education paradigm. Their experiences were written as part of their reflective writing on a hazard prevention course for emergency workers in 2022. The theorizing focuses on the struggle for meaning precipitated by the student’s experiences of trauma and makes a case …
Period poverty – Fostering gender equality through transformative learning
Period poverty is a global phenomenon that affects billions of people, particularly menstruators from developing countries, low-income families, and marginalised communities who lack access to sanitary products, education on healthy period management practices, and basic water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities to manage their periods with dignity. This results in stigma, shame, limited educational and socio-economic opportunities as well a…
Deconstructing gender identity through transformative learning
The theory of transformative learning and its notion of freedom, that we are not trapped by one way of looking at the world or being in the world, fosters a fundamental re-ordering and radical questioning of how one thinks or acts. As a theory of adult learning, it emerged from the women's movement in the US, echoing what it means to become a transformation learner, realising how societal norms and expectations due to gender roles have defined an…
Saving lives: An unsustainable profession – a study of transformative learning at work
The emergency industry has always been an important and challenging profession. Paramedics and firefighters are exposed on a daily basis to potentially traumatic situations with some of what they experience leading to transformations, changing them deeply and fundamentally. These transformative experiences (Paul [2016]. Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press) where they are required to navigate life and death as part of their …
Between Surviving and Thriving—New Approaches to Understanding Learning for Transformation
Background: Paramedics and firefighters frequently encounter critical incidents that require both deep learning and emotional processing. This study investigates how reflective writing facilitates these processes, addressing the need to understand professional development in high-stress environments. Methods: The research analyzed reflective writings from 57 second-year Management of Catastrophe Defense undergraduates who were active emergency se…
Sociology (9 works) · Adult and Continuing Education Topics (8 works) · Pedagogy (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Transformative learning (8 works) · Critical and Liberation Pedagogy (5 works) · Ego Development and Educational Practices (4 works) · Adult education (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Global Educational Policies and Reforms (3 works)