Learning in the Making of

This historical study identifies catalysts for transformative learning in the lives of three scientist-environmentalists important to the 20th-century environmental movement: Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and David Suzuki. Following a brief review of theoretical perspectives on transformative learning, the article argues that transformative learning for these scientists was catalyzed by certain “disorienting dilemmas ” and was both rational and emotional. Moreover, the personal transformative learning of each scientist helped provoke a process of transformative learning in society at large: Leopold’s contribution to the founding of the disciplines of wildlife conservation and restoration ecology, and his “land ethic ” fostered the development an ecological consciousness in the 1940s; Carson’s Silent Spring helped provoke the environmental consciousness of the 1960s; and Suzuki’s public environmental education and activism from the 1970s to the present-day played an influential role in North American environmental movement. Keyword