David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning, 1984 [ ]
Chapter Two
The process of experiential learning
p.20
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
pp.20—21
Experiential learning theory offers a fundamentally different view of the learning process from that of the behavioural theories of learning based on empirical epistemology or the more implicit theories of learning that underlie traditional educational methods, methods that for the most part are based on a rational idealist epistemology. From this different perspective emerge some very different prescriptions for the conduct of education, the proper relationship among learning, work, and other life activities, and the creation of knowledge itself.
This perspective on learning is called "experiential" for two reasons. The first is to tie it clearly to its intellectual origins in the work of Dewey, Lewin, and Piaget. The second reason is to emphasize the central role that experience plays in the learning process. This differentiates experiential learning theory from rationalist and other cognitive theories of learning that tend to give primary emphasis to acquisition, manipulation, and recall of abstract symbols, and from behaviour learning theories that deny any role for consciousness and subjective experience in the learning process. It should be emphasized, however, that the aim of this work is not to pose experiential learning theory as a third alternative to behavioural and cognitive learning theories, but rather to suggest through experiential learning theory a holistic integrative perspective on learning that combines experience, perception, cognition, and behaviour.
(David A. Kolb, 1984, Experiential Learning : experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.)
(Chapter Two, The process of experiential learning, pp.20—21)
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three models of the experiential learning process
—> the Lewinian model of action research and laboratory training
—> Dewey's model of learning
—> Piaget's model of learning and cognitive development
characteristics of experiential learning
—> learning is best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes
—> learning is a continuous process grounded in experience
—> the process of learning requires the resolution of conflicts between dialectically opposed modes of adaptation to the world
—> learning is a holistic process of adaptation to the world
—> learning involves transactions between the person and the environment
—> learning is the process of creating knowledge
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David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning, 1984 [ ]
... We are all psychologists, historians, and atomic physicists. It is just that some of our theories are more crude and incorrect than others. But to focus solely on the refinement and validity of these theories misses the point. The important point is that the people we teach have held these beliefs, whatever their quality, and that until now they have used them whenever the situation called for them, to be atomic physicists, historians, or whatever.
Thus, one's job as an educators is not only to implant new ideas but also to dispose of or modify old ones. In many cases, resistance to new ideas stems from their conflict with old beliefs ... . If the education process begins by bringing out the learner's beliefs and theories, examining and testing them, and then integrating the new, more refined ideas into the person's belief systems, the learning process will be facilitated. Piaget (see Elkind, 1970, Chapter 3) has identified two mechanisms by which new ideas are adopted by an individual — integration and substition. Ideas that evolve through integration tend to become highly stable parts of the person's conception of the world. On the other hand, when the content of a concept changes by means of substitution, there is always the possibility of a reversion to the earlier level of conceptualization and understanding, or to a dual theory of the world where espoused theories learned through substitution are incongruent with theories-in-use that are more integrated with the person's total conceptual and attitudinal view of the world. It is this latter outcome that stimulated Argyris and Schon's inquiry into the effectiveness of professional education:
—<begin citation, Argyris and Schon>
We thought the trouble people have in learning new theories may stem not so much from the inherent difficulty of the new theories as from the existing theories people have that already determine practices. We call their operational theories of action theories-in-use [what people do] to distinguish them from the espoused theories that are used to describe and justify behaviour [what people say 'they do', and give a plausible story to explain why they did what they did]. [Argyris and Schon, 1974, p. viiii]
——<end citation, Argyris and Schon>
(David A. Kolb, 1984, Experiential Learning : experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.)
(Chapter Two, The process of experiential learning, p.35)
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David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning, 1984 [ ]
... In Paulo Freire's work, the dialectic nature of learning and adaptation is encompasses in his concept of praxis, which he defines as "reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it" (1974, p. 36). Central to the concept of praxis is the process of "naming the world," which is both active — in the sense that naming something transform it — and reflective — in that our choice of words gives meaning to the world around us. This process of naming the world is accomplished through dialogue among equals, a joint process of inquiry and learning that Freire set against the banking concept of education described earlier:
—<begin citation, Paulo Freire>
As we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover something which is the essence of dialogue itself: the word. But the word is more than just an instrument which makes dialogue possible; ... . Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed — even in part — the other immediately suffers. ([<< this is a significant statement]) There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world. ([Paulo Freire defines praxis])
An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy[separating in two parts] is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating "blah." It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.
On the other hand, if action is emphasized exclusively, to the detriment of reflection, the word is converted into activism. The latter — action for action's sake — negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible. Either dichotomy, by creating unauthentic forms of existence, creates also unauthentic forms of thought, which reinforce the original dichotomy[separating of the unit into two parts].
Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which men transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn re-appears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Men are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.
But while to say the true word — which is work, which is praxis — is to transform the world, saying that word is not the privilege of some few men, but the right of every man. Consequently, no one can say a true word alone — nor can he say it for another, in a prescriptive act which robs others of their words. [Freire, 1974, pp. 75, 76]
——<end citation, Paulo Freire>
(David A. Kolb, 1984, Experiential Learning : experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.)
(Chapter Two, The process of experiential learning, p.35)
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David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning, 1984 [ ]
p.35
In experiential learning theory, the transactional relationship between the person and the environment is symbolized in the dual meanings of the term experience — one subjective and personal, referring to the person's internal state, as in the "the experience of joy and happiness," and the other objective and environmental, as in, "He has 20 years of experience on this job." These two forms of experience interpenetrate and interrelate in very complex ways, as, for example, in the old saw, "He doesn't have 20 years experience, but one year repeated 20 times." Dewey describes the matter this way:
—<begin citation, John Dewey>
Experience does not go on simply inside a person. It does go on there, for it influences the formation of attitudes of desire and purpose. But this is not the whole of the story. Every genuine experience has an active side which changes in some degree the objective conditions under which experiences are had. The difference between civilization and savagery, to take an example on a large scale, is found in the degree in which previous experiences have changed the objective conditions under which subsequent experiences take place. The existence of roads, of means of rapid movement and transportation, tools, implements, furniture, electric light and power, are illustrations. Destroy the external conditions of present civilized experience, and for a time our experience would relapse into that of barbaric peoples . . . .
The word "interaction" assigns equal rights to both factors in experience — objective and internal conditions. Any normal experience is an interplay of these two sets of conditions. Taken together . . . they form what we call a situation.
The statement that individuals live in a world means, in the concrete, that they live in a series of situations. And when it it said that they live in these situations, the meaning of the word "in" is different from its meaning when it is said that pennies are "in" a pocket or paint is "in" a can. It means, once more, that interaction is going on between an individual and objects and other persons. The conceptions of situation and of interaction are inseparable from each other. An experience is always what it is because of a transaction taking place between an individual and what, at the time, constitutes his environment, whether the latter consists of persons with whom he is talking about some topic or event, the subject talked about being also a part of the situation; the book he is reading (in which his environing conditions at the time may be England or ancient Greece or an imaginary region); or the materials of an experiment he is performing. The environment, in other words, is whatever conditions interact with personal needs, desires, purposes, and capacities to create the experience which is had. Even when a person builds a castle in the air he is interacting with the objects which he constructs in fancy. [Dewey, 1938, p. 39, 43-43]
——<end citation, John Dewey>
(David A. Kolb, 1984, Experiential Learning : experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.)
(Chapter Two, The process of experiential learning, p.35)
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