Experiential Learning Theory for Intentional and Grounded Teaching
University may have prepared me for some of the issues and realities of teaching… or at least helped me to think about them. However, something it certainly didn’t teach me was how to apply all that theory I learned!
As a super green undergrad student, of course I knew I would be a constructivist teacher, facilitating beautiful and effortless learning experiences for my students to develop their own understandings. BUT… the jam-packed nature of teaching means that all too often, my intentionality goes out the window in exchange for something that is just “ready” for kids!
Over the course of my teaching career, and most intensely during my graduate studies, I have felt my philosophy of education shaping and solidifying. I know what I believe about teaching and learning.
Education is not an affair of “telling” and being told, but an active and constructive process.
-John Dewey
Teaching means creating situations where structures can be discovered.
-Jean Piaget
To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, is that is the first duty of the educator.
-Maria Montessori
I don’t want to be responsible for just keeping kids busy. I want to do as Piaget suggests, and create stimulating situations! But HOW!? And how to do it consistently, and better yet, intentionally!
For me, experiential learning theory (ELT) has been the answer. In this post, I would like to share this simple, yet transformative learning theory with you.
First off, ELT is actually like a collection of all of the powerful theories you would have learned about in university too. I’m serious. Think Dewey, Parker Follett, Piaget, Vygotsky, Jung and Freire. David Kolb essentially studied nine different scholar’s work, and realized that they all contributed to a greater mission and vision:
“Learning in which the learner is directly in touch with the realities being studied...contrasted with the learner who only reads about, hears, about, talks about, or writes about these realities but never comes into contact with them as part of the learning process” (Keeton & Tate, 1978).
Kolb wrapped all of this research up into a (relatively) simple experiential learning cycle. The cycle is made up of four steps:
Concrete experience
Reflective observation
Abstract conceptualization
Active experimentation
Kolb simplifies them by saying: (1) Experience, (2) Reflect, (3) Think, (4) Act.
In this post I won’t go into explaining the theory in detail, I’ll leave some video links that do that better than I could in a post! However, I do want to share three reasons why this theory has been so powerful in my teaching practice, and why it can be in yours too!
This is how humans actually learn. Learning is a natural human process. School sometimes teaches us to think otherwise, but we are learning all. the. time. When we plan a bunch of made up, time-filling stuff for students, we can get lost. We overemphasize some of the steps while ignoring others. In the end, our students don’t really retain anything and it’s futile.
It is less work to create a framework that you use over and over. Having a simple, yet flexible way to plan units and experiences can dramatically decrease our planning time and increase our productivity! I’ve been introduced to so many planning tools over the years. A project-based planning tool, a second-language planning tool, an xyz planning tool. Using and modifying the experiential learning cycle encompasses them all.
Let’s actually DO LESS TO DO MORE! We’ve heard the saying a million times. In education, less is more. But why is it actually so hard to do less? A trusted mentor of mine once told me “in education it is just too much, too fast for students”. As teachers, we sometimes pick up the pace because students get “bored” so we think that by moving on, we can keep them “entertained”. With ELT, it’s easy to bolster up any one of the steps for enrichment, and it is equally as easy to dial things back to simplify. ELT allows students to go deeper instead of just scratching all of the surfaces.
I can’t wait to share some simple tools with you that will help you envision the possibilities of each step and your role as teacher can morph as students progress through the learning experience. In the meantime, please follow along on Instagram (@jenndoevelearning) to learn more about ELT and how it can transform your teaching too!
Sources:
Keeton, M., & Tate, P. (Eds.) . (1978). Learning by experience-What, why, how. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
