User:Carlahelou/Experiential education

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In addition to changing students' roles, experiential education requires teachers to spice up their responsibilities when it comes to teaching. As students actively engage themselves in learning, their thinking extends beyond their classroom. Because of this, teachers cannot organize a curriculum as a neat and foreseeable package. Teachers also become active learners, working with their students on the learning activities they created, allowing students to provide constructive feedback. This helps teachers work beyond the school and district guidelines.

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Introduction [edit]

Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content. This concept is distinct from experiential learning, however experiential learning is a subfield and operates under the methodologies associated with experiential education. The Association for Experiential Education regards experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities". Experiential education is the term for the philosophy and educational progressivism is the movement which it informed. The Journal of Experiential Education publishes peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical academic research within the field.

John Dewey[edit]

John Dewey was the most famous proponent of hands-on learning or experiential education, which was discussed in his book Experience and Education, published in 1938. In this book, Dewey expressed his ideas about curriculum theory in the context of historical debates about school organization and the need to have experience as a fundamental aspect. in the educational process; hence, experiential education is referred to as a philosophy. Dewey's fame during that period rested on relentlessly critiquing public education and pointing out that the authoritarian, strict, pre-ordained knowledge approach of modern traditional education was too concerned with delivering knowledge, and not enough with understanding students' experiences.

Make this paragraph the last one in this section! Dewey's work influenced dozens of other prominent experiential models and advocates in the later 20th century, including Foxfire, service learning, Kurt Hahn and Outward Bound, and Paulo Freire. For example, the work of Paul Freire is often cited in works on experiential education. He focused on the participation by students in experience and radical democracy, and the creation of praxis among learners.

In addition to the notions raised by Dewey, recent research has shown that experiential learning does not replace traditional methods of learning but supplements it in the form of laboratory and clinical learning to offer additional skills, perspectives, and understanding of relationships. Instead, Experiential learning is designed to improve one's understanding by giving one the freedom to explore and find the learning path that is most suitable for them.

Practice[edit]

The methodologies reflected in experiential education have evolved since the time of Hahn and Dewey. For experiential education to become efficient pedagogy, physical experience must be combined with reflection. Adding reflective practice, allows for personal introspection of challenges and key learnings. Essentially, engaging in physical challenges serves as a passage for self-discovery, offering insights into both personal qualities and interactions with others. However, for experiential education to be productive, experiences should have a gap , allowing learners enough time to absorb the information they encountered.

Experiential education informs many educational practices underway in schools (formal education) and out-of-school (informal education) programs. Many teaching methods rely on experiential education to provide context and frameworks for learning through action and reflection while others at higher levels (university and professional education) focus on field skills and modeling. Examples of different methods are listed below:

Examples[edit]

Writing journals proves to be quite effective as part of English classes. Specifically, by writing "personal" and "text-related" journals, students find meaning in their own thoughts as well as in concepts learned in class. Personal journaling is the recording of past and present personal thoughts and events in the student's life to enhance self-awareness, student interest, and learning. Text-related journaling is writing about concepts learned in class in relation to students' personal experiences, to promote understanding. *This seems a bit biased?*

Several Australian high schools have established experiential education programs, including Caulfield Grammar School's five-week internationalism programs in Nanjing, China and Geelong Grammar School's Timbertop outdoor education program

At the professional school level, experiential education is often integrated into a curriculum in "clinical" courses following the medical school model of "See one, Do one, Teach one", in which students learn by practicing medicine. This approach is being introduced in other professions in which skills are directly worked into courses to teach every concept. These concepts include interviewing, listening skills, negotiation, contract writing and advocacy. (starting with interviewing, listening skills, negotiation, contract writing and advocacy, for example) to larger-scale projects in which students run legal aid clinics or community loan programs, or write legislation or community development plans.

In legal education, critical pedagogy is associated with devising more equitable methods of teaching, helping students develop consciousness of freedom, and helping them connect knowledge to power.

Change in roles and structures[edit]

Whether teachers employ experiential education in cultural journalism, service learning, environmental education, or more traditional school subjects, it's key idea involves engaging student voice in active roles for the purpose of learning. Armstrong (2012) claims that students should be responsible for learning, not teachers. Students participate in a real activity with real consequences for the purpose of meeting learning objectives.

The practice of conversation is almost a lost art. The most significant intellectual achievement is not so much in problem solving, but in question posing." Through experimental education, students are capable of finding their voice through peer-to-peer interaction.

In experimental education, students are given the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills by making connections to the real world. Therefore, effective learning entails active experimentation with a hands-on approach to learning. It is perceived that students learn more by being active. Students are interdependent in establishing group goals and decision-making skills. As a result, students are also capable of developing leadership skills, which can also enhance student motivation and confidence.

When students are given a choice in terms of content to be learned, it ensures the teacher that his or her learners are interactive in the learning process. According to Ernie Stringer, "Action learners move through continuous cycles of this inquiry process to improve their understanding, extend their knowledge, or refine their skills." When given a preference, students may feel motivated to take control of his or her learning experience. Student incentives are tied to progress in academic achievement. "Research indicates that intrinsic motivation stems from one's interests and capacities to surmount challenge s when presented or pursued," says Fenice B. Boyd. Many schools are encouraging teachers to tap into student interests with the hope that they transfer that motivation into the classroom.

Through the continuous cycle of learning, teacher's often work with students to develop a framework of knowledge, which is to be evaluated based on student input to the lessons content. Therefore, the teacher should establish criteria of what is to be learned as related to the student(s) choice in learning material. Ernie Stringer draws on the importance that "action research provides a process for developing a rich, engaging curriculum relevant to the lives and purposes of students, engaging their interests and abilities, and serving the broad human needs of community, society, and the planet. Creative construction of curricula or syllabi provides the means whereby the needs, perspectives, and/or interests of diverse stakeholders can be incorporated into vital, creative, effective programs of learning." In essence, a well-planned curriculum is designed for learning that encompasses a broad range of goals and individual needs that ensures the active learning process.

Development in Asian countries[edit] This section should be removed, but if needed to be kept please move into the introduction

Established in 1973, Breakthrough in Hong Kong was the first non-profit organization that applied the concepts of experiential education (though primarily conceptualized in terms of outdoor adventure education) in youth works. Since then, development in experiential education has proceeded in Singapore, Taiwan, Macau, and some large cities in China.

Experiential methods in education have existed in China for over two thousand years, since the time Confucius began promoting the educational style. However, John Dewey was in China in the early 1900s and his ideas were extremely popular. Interest in Dewey's experience in China and contribution is growing.

Experiential education started in Qatar in 2010 through AL-Bairaq, which is an outreach, non-traditional educational program that targets high school students and focuses on a curriculum based on STEM fields. The idea behind AL-Bairaq is to offer high school students the opportunity to connect with the research environment in the Center for Advanced Materials (CAM) at Qatar University. Faculty members train and mentor the students and help develop and enhance their critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork skills, using a hands-on-activities approach.

Starting in the early twenties, experiential education organizations in Asia begin gaining accreditation by the Association for Experiential Education, which had historically primarily served a North American audience. Outward Bound Hong Kong was accredited in 2011, followed by Chadwick International in Korea in 2019 and the Hanifl Centre in 2020.

See also[edit] I don't think this section is necessary...but if one would like to include it a short sentence should be added to introduce the section.

For further information on learning about experiential education, you may look thru the articles listed below.

• Active learning – Educational technique
• Cooperative education – Type of education
• David A. Kolb – American educational theorist (born 1939)
• Design-based learning – Learner centric pedagogy
• Experiential learning – Learn by reflect on active involvement
• John Dewey – American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer (1859–1952)
• Laboratory school – School designed to facilitate experimentation and development in education
• Learning space – Physical setting for a learning environment
• Outdoor education – Organized learning that takes place in the outdoors

Citations [edit] Added one citation to the reference list

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