Chapter 2: Literature Review
Experiential Education
In conducting research on experiential education for the learning center and the brain, I found it hard to pinpoint the definition of experiential education. But the historical “Allegory of the Cave” came to mind in the process. It is the best experience I can give readers to better understand experiential education.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a great example of the importance of experiential education as a tool to eliminate ignorance and narrow “point-of-view” glasses or perspectives of others and the world. In the Allegory, a group of prisoners in a cave are tied with their heads facing the ground. The prisoners had been tied up as children and are now adults. There is a fire behind the prisoners and a walkway in
between the fire and the prisoners. Whenever people walk by, shadows are cast on the floor where the prisoners stare, and the voices of the people in the cave are the only sound they can hear. To the prisoners, reality is what is in front of them: the shadows and random voices. One day, one of the prisoners is untied and free to leave. When he gets up and turns around, he cannot even perceive what he is looking at. His reality is completely shattered causing him pain and disbelief. He is fascinated by the fire and the daylight coming from the end of the cave, but it also causes him great pain and discomfort (he is pushed to see past his current horizon and is forced outside of his comfort zone). He goes back to tell the prisoners what he has experienced, but they
do not believe him and cannot even comprehend what he is speaking about. They can only understand what they have experienced as prisoners facing the ground and
seeing shadows. They have no other frame of reference to understand what the freed
prisoner tells them or to see another perspective, because they lack personal experience about which he speaks. The shadows are their reality.
This story is a perfect metaphor for the definition of experiential education. The prisoners who have never turned around and seen past their perceived reality of the shadows only know what they themselves have experienced. They are limited by their lack of experiences and unable to learn more. The freed man has gained personal experience through discovering new views and places outside of his previous reality.
It was extremely uncomfortable for him and challenged him emotionally and physically to change his perception and understanding of the world and reality. With these new experiences, he has more references to utilize, allowing him to become more educated. He will be able to apply more of what he is exposed to in his own life to his overall knowledge and future education. If he had tried to read a book while tied up, face down, most of the metaphors, descriptions and relationships between characters would make no sense because he has no personal connection with or experience of them. By increasing his experiences, his education and knowledge are dramatically increased. By being freed, he has experienced and learned more, yet at the same time he is still able to understand the prisoners’ views and perception of reality since he has been in their shoes and shared the same experiences that they know. He has compassion and empathy and is educated to both realities.
This is learning in its purest form. Experiential education works from the principle that through experiences people gain understanding, references, and a wider base on which to apply knowledge. To truly become educated, one has to have experience in areas being studied. It is good to learn in a book about the White House,
but going to the White House and taking a tour and then reading about the White House in a book is even better. Experiential education allows students to build on academic knowledge and apply it to their personal lives and memories, broadening their own reality.
Defining Experiential Education
The idea that there is one simple and direct definition of experiential education has been up for great debate since the beginning of time, experiential education time, that is. Experiential education has many sides to it and takes many forms in how it is presented. People who are not familiar with experiential education may say, “Oh, that is education where you are not learning academics.” Or “That is ropes courses, outdoor camping trips and stuff like that, right?” Or they may say,
“But how does that have anything to do with academics and state standards?” and the favorite question of all, “What is experiential education?”
Sakofs (1995) defines experiential education in the briefest of terms, yet with great depth and clarity:
Broadly defined, experiential education is a philosophical orientation toward teaching and learning that values and encourages linkages between concrete education activities and abstract lessons alone: this goal is accomplished by confronting the learner with elements of reality which augment their understanding of the materials under investigation, because reality demands that learners more fully engage themselves in the learning process (i.e., experience the learning process) in ways that abstract teaching tools, such as books, cannot accomplish. (p.149)
Chapman (1995) gives examples of experiential education programs and what they do for the student: “Cross-cultural home stays, community service projects, urban adventure programs, work-study programs, internships, cooperative education approaches in the classroom - all these (along with much more) provide great
opportunities for students to become directly and enthusiastically engaged in real learning” ( p.7). It is easy to see that there is a wide variety of ways to go about creating an experiential education experience.
In On Defining Experiential Education, Laura Joplin writes, “Learning is experiential. This means anytime a person learns, he or she must ‘experience’ the subject - significantly identify with, seriously interact with, form a personal relationship with, etc. Many educational settings only partially promote learning” (Joplin, 1995, p.15). In a traditional classroom setting some aspects of her definition are not always covered due to the format of standards, teaching methodologies and the focus on lecture-based instruction. Joplin introduces two approaches to fine-tune her definition of experiential education: the Five Stage Theory and the Nine Characteristics comparing experiential and non-experiential programs. These two
theories are essential for my design of the Community Learning Center business plan.
The Five Stages of Experiential Education Theory
The five stages are focus, action, challenge, support/feedback and debrief. All five stages must be engaged for the lesson to be fully considered experiential education. Some examples can easily be seen through internships, wilderness experiences and outdoor pursuits where there is an unknown and the student is “challenged” to go beyond their comfort zone and learn. A fully experiential education lesson must have debriefing, support and feedback for the participants to digest what they have just been exposed to and understand what they learned by
applying it to their lives. Joplin goes on to describe the nine characteristics that define
experiential education from typical classroom education. These are listed below: (Joplin, 1995).
The Nine Characteristics of Experiential Education
The first characteristic is student-based rather than teacher-based. This means the teacher goes with the student’s interest and pace of learning rather than the teacher’s idea of organization and context of the lesson (Joplin, 1995). The teacher acts as a facilitator, helping guide the students towards their learning goals.
The second characteristic is personal, not impersonal nature. “The person learning is as important as the subject being learned” (Joplin, 1995, p.20). This is important because experiential education allows the students to share who they are, and the teacher can apply the subjects to the students’ interests. It makes the course content personal, creating an atmosphere in which the student feels cared about, recognized and personally valued.
The third characteristic is process. This is the method in which a student goes about finding the answer to a question (Joplin, 1995). With experiential education the student has some choices in how he or she wants to answer their questions and learn, which means experiential education will address multiple learning styles within the same lesson. The process to solve a math problem can be completed in a variety of ways through experiential education. Consider, for example, finding the mileage between two places in a town. The students could use a map with a scale to find the mileage, they could get a reading on Mapquest on the computer, or they could actually go out and ride a bike with a speedometer and track the mileage by bike.
These three examples allow kinesthetic learners, visual learners, auditory learners and
verbal learners to learn in their strength area instead of being given two mileages and just answering the question using simple algebra. The beneficial part of experiential education in this example is that the student has a choice of both teaching methods: three experiential education options and the traditional math method of algebra. This is how experiential education makes traditional learning methods connect at a personal level for the student.
The fourth characteristic is product orientation, the end result of what they learned from the process. This is the application of the student’s learning to his or her life and education. It is the crossover between the active learning to the course content.
The fifth characteristic is evaluation for internal and external reasons. Evaluation in traditional settings is when someone else (a teacher, parent, or other adult) evaluates the student, b