Conducted over a three-year period, this multiple-case study examined the previous professional backgrounds, transitional issues, and intellectual transformation of four Afghan university teachers during their graduate study in language education at a large Midwestern research university. An intellectual transformation coding scheme synthesized from works by Freire (1970) and Perry (1968, 1970) was used to analyze their intellectual transitions, particularly as voiced in their final interviews. As a participant observer serving in various phases of a special program for Afghan educators, the researcher collected data from multiple sources including emails, observational notes, project-related reports, participants' academic works, questionnaire responses, interview transcripts, and other work-related documents. The main findings suggest that transformation for these scholars largely involved bringing newly acquired academic knowledge and discourse development into line with cultural-political knowledge developed from life experiences, positioning them for further transformation when they returned to their home country. All four participants drew on both external and internal resources to cope with their transitional challenges. The most emphatically reported intellectual transformations included their strong commitment to the constructivist learning and teaching approaches in which their roles as a learner greatly shift and their heightened confidence in applying the Western educational approaches in the contexts of Afghanistan. This study concludes that an explanation of transformative experiences of mature graduate students should be based on a proposed Intellectual Transformation Scheme, in which the students' educational and cultural backgrounds, individual factors, and realities in the target environments are taken into account.