This thesis presents a conceptualization of transformative learning seen as learning capable of promoting personal, cultural and social change. To that end, it applies a form of conceptual analysis associated with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to a critical reconstructive perspective in science education research. Sociocultural approaches to science education that aim toward some kind of scientific literacy for an ethically and politically engaged and socioenvironmentally responsible citizenship converge on the thesis that every critique of the form of enculturation in science must be made in the light of a critique of science and society. Such broad critical stance is envisioned within reconstructive perspectives and agendas which seek to reimagine and reconstitute education and science with aspirations of deep-rooted social change. The emphasis on reconstruction (beyond critique) entails orient science education towards sociopolitical action. Each in its own way, the curricular and pedagogical proposals with this bias culminate in the notion of a transformation in attitudes, behaviors, values, beliefs and actions that is incorporated into learning. However, there is a lack of theoretical elaborations on transformative learning. In addition, there are little clarity and confusion about the concepts and principles in terms of which researchers and practitioners of activist science education spell out their understanding of the nature of such learning. Based on Wittgenstein's methodological ideas regarding conceptual investigation and in an outlook of his approach to learning and his attitude towards moral and existential issues, vital to personal and social autonomy and responsibility, the first chapter of the thesis discusses the relevance of this philosopher to education, and to science education theory in particular, in the current critical juncture, marked by social and environmental problems and, therefore, where clarity of thinking and action is most urgently needed.

For its part, the examination of transformative learning developed in the subsequent chapter using an approach to learning that focuses on participation in social practices, here adopted as a theoretical framework for activist science education, utilize remarks by Wittgenstein to weave a conceptual critique to the participationist perspectives of Troy Sadler and Derek Hodson. The third and final chapter applies Wittgensteinian conceptual investigation to design our own approach to transformative learning, developed in dialogue with, and partly based on, Anna Sfard's discursive participationist approach, which also take Wittgenstein as her main philosophical inspiration. In sum, this thesis defends that transformative learning can be seen as a process of human development that embraces the struggle against dogmatism, going from the imagination of new ways of living and signifying the world to the telling of identities, as stimuli for self-reflection and change. In the wake of a moral and existential sociology developed as a cultural sociology of action, this work comes to the conclusion that the connection between culture, learning and personal change amounts to a connection between culture and agency, and thus links social action to social change.