Although helping people to learn, and therefore also sometimes to change, is precisely the role of education, there is a danger in our efforts to change people. Few authors have addressed the ethical conundrums inherent in transformative education, and those who have done so have either not used a unified ethical paradigm or have approached the task from a consequentialist (“the ends justify the means”) ethical framework, which we find problematic. Our deontological approach builds on the principle of human dignity, and specifically on the right to autonomy and recognition of value pluralism. This paper specifies ethical considerations and their implications for promoting transformative learning.

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