Hi folks,

Recently I have been trying to get a bit more into the theory of experiential learning. Not just to gain knowledge, but primarily to try to find my own words to express my view on it.

Experiential learning means a lot to me. It simply feels right to work in this field. I believe in it. And I believe in facilitating the process of experiential learning for participants in a program. But what am I doing when I am facilitating this process?

Am I trying to speed up learning for the participant?
Am I trying to reframe frames of reference of the participants?
Am I trying not to interefere too much in the learning process?
Am I trying to give the participants a new perspective on things?
All of the above?
None of the above?

I go by what I feel is right. Intuition can't be missed, but I would love to do things more conciously, so I am able to explain why I do the interventions I do and why I am choosing certain activities.

In preparation of my workshop, it would be great to read some recent texts on facilitating experiential learning. I am not looking for text on learning from the point of view of the participant. I am looking for theory on the part of the facilitator.

Anyone got any links/documents to share? Is anyone else interested in this subject?

Sincerely,
Saskia

Power of Experiential Learning by Beard is one of the best I think!

Ciao Saskia, I suggest your read the Paper from Sarah Bodner called PExperiential Training: A Stepping Stone for Work Teams. you may find it at this link http://www.reedsresearch.com/TeamFormation_files/workteamstudy.pdf

Jacopo

Irene,Jacopo and Lesley; Thanks for the tips! Now I am doing my 'homework'!
See you soon.

Hi Saskia,

You may be interested in this chapter I wrote in 2004:
'Facilitation and Reviewing in Outdoor Education'
http://reviewing.co.uk/articles/facilitating-outdoor-education.htm

Also see 'Facilitating Reflection A Manual for Leaders and Educators'
Written and Compiled by Julie Reed & Christopher Koliba
http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/reflection_manual/index.html

I see that you are especially interested in facilitating the LEARNING process. I have found that despite a wealth of information 'out there' about facilitation, the focus of most writing about facilitation is not so much about facilitating LEARNING and is more about facilitating meetings/decisions, groups, activities, programmes, and generally making things happen without giving direct orders.

So I am really interested in learning more about facilitating learning.

best wishes

Roger

Hi all,

Roger triggered me with his comment that Saskia is especially intersted in the facilitating of experiential learning. This pops to mind the question, what is it that is learned? If you know that, you can adapt your mode of guidance to that. Johan Hovelynck wrote about it nicely in his "Beyond didatics" (Hovelynck J. (2001). Beyond didactics: a reconnaissance of experiential learning. Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 6(1), 4-12). In this paper he explores what stance of facilitation is needed to be able to say that experiential education is in fact experiential education. Experiential education is developed as a critique on "blue print models of learning and teaching" in which the teacher knows better and educates his more or less ignorant pupils. Johan sees a tendency in "adventure education" to go back to this model of teaching and learning. It is much easier to sell, both to the clients as well as to the participants, since most people are educated in this type of learning (from schools to universities) and since it provides a glance of certainty to the endeavour. You know beforehand what you will know after the "experience".

I think this mainly points to the issue that people have been using to wrong term for "adventure education" and have called it "experiential education". Not all activities focussed at learning that take place in the outdoors are experiential. Only those that take the experience of the participants as focus- and startingpoint for learning are. The others might be great experiences, add a whole new dimension to peoples lives, and even yield more for the client system, but they are not experiential.

Now there is a distinction between adventure education in broad and experiential education as a specific subset of it, we are no where nearer to the question at the beginning of this post: what is it that is learned in experiential education?

I also send Saskia offline some papers on the facilitating of a socratic dialogue. They are in Dutch, so I thought they would not be of too much use to people here. Even though they do not deal with facilitating experiential education, I think they are relevant because they deal with a similar issue. A nice model there is developed by Leonard Nelson, who adapted Socrates style of questioning to fit group conversations. In this, the ultimate goal is to help the participants free themselves from, or at least make them know with their own beliefs as, false beliefs about themselves, others and the social world they live in, and develop better beliefs instead. I think something similar goes for experiential education too, as I understand it.

Greetings,


Jeroen

I came across this useful 'rule of thumb' for distinguishing between facilitation and teaching: in facilitation, the goal is usually for people to learn something that nobody knows at the beginning, whereas in teaching the goal is usually for people to learn what the teacher already knows. It sometimes makes sense to mix these approaches together, but those who teach while thinking they are facilitating are missing out on a whole range of possibilities that EE or AE can open up. Roger

I even think that what is learned in experiential education can not be learned by means of teaching; it is a different kind of knowledge. Even though I do have my doubts about "knowledge as a box" idea in "regular" teaching, I do not think that the kind of knowledge generated in experiential education is the type of knowledge which can be transferred from one person to the other, not even if you would have the ideal mechanism for it. It is not the kind of knowledge which is general and the same for everybody; it is the kind of knowledge which is personal and unique and even can not be known to the facilitator or teacher.

Jeroen

A forum on the internet definitely facilitates learning!
Thanks to the people who have contributed here, my ideas for a workshop become clearer. I am learning by doing, thinking, reading.... and communicating with you all. Great!

Hi Saskia - I just happened to come across another answer to your initial question. Roger

Mike Gass writes in his introduction to 'Facilitating Experiential
Learning' (the Aug/Sept. 97 issue of the Journal of Experiential
Education). He writes:
The typical intended outcomes of facilitation are to: (1) enhance
the quality of the learning experience (2) assist clients in
finding directions and sources for functional change (3) create
changes that are lasting and transferable.