Educational Perspectives: Experiential Learning: From Theory to Practice

JoDee M. Anderson

doi:10.1542/neo.7-6-e287

This article requires a subscription to view the full text. If you have a subscription you may use the login form below to view the article. Access to this article can also be purchased.

Download PDF

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

—Confucius

The Value of Experience

Relatively few infants require intervention in the delivery room; even fewer require full resuscitation with chest compressions and epinephrine. How then, do clinicians learn to manage such rare events? How do they teach others to respond effectively to such crises in the delivery room? These questions are being addressed via many novel approaches in neonatology, from mock codes to simulated deliveries. Educators are attempting to create experiences from which learners can build an internal database of skills, knowledge, and behaviors.

Theory

Experiential Learning Defined

According to several educational theorists in the 1980s, the nucleus of all learning lies in the way we process experience and critically reflect upon that experience. Educators spoke of learning as a cycle that begins with experience, continues with reflection, and later leads to action, which itself becomes a concrete experience for reflection. This model is consistent with constructivism theory, in which learning is a process of constructing meaning that is defined by the individual and dependent on the person’s knowledge base. Experience can be defined as the accumulation of knowledge or skill that results from direct participation in events or activities, that is, the content of direct observation or involvement in an event. For the purpose of this discussion, the following definition of experiential learning is used: A process through which a learner generates knowledge, skill, and value from direct experiences.

Dewey and Learner-centered Education

In contrast to traditional teacher-centered methods, in the 1930s, John Dewey introduced a competing paradigm in which the focus is learner-centered. Dewey argued that for learning to occur through experience, that experience must exhibit the two major principles of continuity and interaction. The principle of continuity implies that to each new experience, the learner brings meaning from past experiences and takes meaning …