The student as a researcher. Fostering and evaluating students’ meaning perspectives in a collaborative action-research

Different perspectives have been developed starting from J. Mezirow’s work and several experiences and reflections were born after ‘Learning as Transformation’ (1991). Some of these new interpretative points of view used a theoretical framework to study the impact of Freire or Habermas work in the Mezirow’s thoughts (Fleming, 2016). Other researchers (Mezirow; Taylor, 2010) tried to translate in educational practices some of the ideas showed in TLT (Hoggan, Simpson, Stuckey, 2009) or use it as a background for planning researches in several contexts. Thus, TLT has been a generous and generative theory (Taylor, Cranton, 2012) and now it would be unfair trying to trap it. However, all these researchers seem to emphasize and stress the methodological impact of TLT in educational settings or in scientific research programs. In many meetings a transversal question seems to grow up: how does TLT support and/or develop professional practices, research activities or teaching processes? How does it inspire our work as researchers or professionals and how can we evaluate the impact of this flair? The experience described in this paper is developed from the previous stated questions. It is about teachers’ experiences conducted in the Department of Education at the University of Siena in 2015 where the TLT has been used by a group of professors as a background to understand the ways a teaching process can change the perspectives of a group of students in a higher education program.