The purpose of the study was to discover the phenomenology of a cohort of 13 self-selected participants, who explored their transformational learning through an inquiry of reflective practice. The midlevel North American community college academic administrators wrote unstructured journals during the practicum phase of a one-year continuing professional education program. Reflective passages were extracted, analyzed and interpreted using the phenomenological research model.

Since the participants’ primary source of information was the solitary process of critical reflective practice, they perceived of their limitations as unique, resulting in an accelerated drive to work harder. A community of networking peers would have enabled these advanced professionals to view the phenomenon of the midlevel change agent not as symptomatic of personal deficiencies but as indicative of systemic dynamics.

Continuing professional education programs can increase the productivity of the midlevel change agent by structuring collaborative problem-solving opportunities requiring incorporation of systemic information about change.

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Keywords: Transformational learning, community college administration, reflective practice, continuing education.

Volume 1, 2006