Transformative Education Lab

Deoksoon Kim
Director, Transformative Education Lab

At Boston College, formative education is more than a philosophy—it’s a way of teaching, learning, and living. Today, it is growing into a movement. Formative education guides students and educators to grow as whole human beings. Rooted in the Jesuit tradition, formative education invites people into a shared journey of growth, purpose, and belonging.

Formative education responds to one of the most urgent needs in education today: nurturing meaning, connection, and humanity in a challenging world. Through research, teaching, and collaboration, the Transformative Education Lab (TLab) works to show how this approach transforms classrooms, schools, and communities. TLab is a hub for formative education. We bridge research and practice, cataloguing and disseminating research on formative education, and curating practical tools for doing formative education. Thus, we help educators create spaces where people don’t just learn but truly flourish.

For instance, through initiatives such as the Formative Education Summer Institute, grant competitions, and collaborative research projects, TLab identifies and amplifies innovative practices that help students thrive intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. A recent Institute participant described the experience as “a reminder of why I became a teacher—to see my students not just as learners, but as whole persons growing into their
purpose.”

TLab is not just a center—it’s a movement committed to transforming schools and communities into spaces where young people can grow fully as purposeful human beings. We focus on several principles and practices that make formative education at BC distinctive and impactful in the lives of students and educators.

Cura Personalis: Care for the Whole Person

At BC, cura personalis—care for the whole person—is not an abstract value; it’s a daily way of being. You see it in classrooms where professors greet students by name, ask about their well-being, and nurture both intellect and spirit. In the TLab Summer Institute, mornings begin with participants sharing a “formative moment” from their teaching journey. These reflections can lead to laughter, tears, and renewed purpose—reminding us that education is not only about minds meeting ideas, but hearts meeting hearts.

Integrating Academics and Character

Formative education bridges academic excellence with moral and emotional growth. In one teacher education course, for example, students study literacy theory alongside personal narratives to explore how stories can cultivate empathy. When a preservice teacher realized how her own immigrant journey shaped her teaching, she turned scholarship into service—an embodiment of how learning can form both understanding and character.

Purpose

At BC, education is also about discerning vocation—discovering who you are called to become. During a TLab workshop, for example, one high school principal reflected on her calling and redefined her leadership, shifting focus from test scores to teacher well-being and belonging. Such experiences nurture clarity, compassion, and purpose in action.

Community and Belonging

Formative education flourishes in relationship. Through TLab, educators, students, and researchers create spaces where everyone’s story matters. One participant described her TLab experience as a “microcosm of belonging,” inspiring her to design classrooms that honor every voice and foster genuine community.

Ethical and Civic Engagement

Education should extend beyond personal growth—it calls individuals to work for justice and the common good. When BC students partnered with local schools to mentor immigrant youth through a TLab civic engagement project, for instance, they practiced empathy, advocacy, and solidarity. Formative education transforms compassion into concrete change.

A Holistic and Interdisciplinary Vision

Because human growth is interconnected, formative education draws from education, psychology, theology, philosophy, and the social sciences. In one TLab initiative, theology and education faculty co-created Educating for Compassion, blending neuroscience, spirituality, and pedagogy to help teachers cultivate both intellectual depth and moral imagination. Formative education unites intellectual rigor with compassion, reflection with action, and individual growth with the common good. At the Transformative Education Lab, we think of this as a movement—one that reimagines what education can be when it seeks not only to teach, but also to transform. When education forms the whole person, it has the power to transform the world.