The Work That Breaks Us: Affective Labour, Transformative Learning, and Institutional Complicity

This forum piece examines the emotional, relational, and ethical dimensions of transformative learning in contemporary higher education. Drawing on practitioner experience at a research-intensive Canadian university and scholarship in critical pedagogy, adult learning, and institutional ethics, it illustrates how transformative learning is shaped and often constrained by organizational cultures, political pressures, and unfulfilled institutional commitments to inclusion. While transformative learning aspires to disrupt assumptions and cultivate more just ways of knowing, practitioners frequently encounter institutional inertia, value misalignment, and forms of institutional betrayal that complicate this work. These dynamics intensify the affective labour required of staff and faculty, often resulting in moral injury, burnout, and precarious relational work that remains largely invisible. The paper argues for a fuller recognition of the human conditions underpinning transformative learning and calls for institutional courage, relational accountability, and more sustainable structures of support.