Teaching/Learning disconnect
Generally, in all kinds of education, what is taught doesn’t correspond exactly to what is learned. So there is often a disconnect between program goals, experience, and the students’ or participants’ felt inner lives.
Because people are independent agents, with different cultural contexts that they view as reality, and with independent and varied desires that may make them want something other than what the teacher or leader wants, students often respond differently to the same experience.
Experiential education helps reduce this disconnect by making the learning outcome a skill that can be performed. We learn by doing better than we learn by sitting and listening.
Even with experiential education there is a gap caused, not only by the diversity and complexity of students, but also by inability to reflect, by accidents during the experience, and by temporary moods. These and other causes can result in experiential learning experiences that fail to engage the students internally.
Recognizing operational, affective, and higher-level thinking outcomes
One part of a possible solution to the teaching/learning disconnect is to recognize that most experiential learning has an objective or physical component and an affective component. Other words for this affective component are subjective, social, aesthetic, spiritual, or philosophical. Engaging the student in physical learning; in subjective, social, aesthetic, spiritual, or philosophical learning; and in analysis and synthesis.
For example, when teaching a math problem, such as 2 + 2 = 4, the teacher hopes not only that the student will be able to do the operation but also that the student will draw enjoyment from the operation and also know how to apply the operation in everyday life. Students can also go beyond application to analysis of implications.
In addition to addressing affective components of an outcome, reflection on experience can link experiential learning and higher level thinking, such as the advanced elements of Bloom’s taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation.
Guided reflection can help the student apply and value learning. Some reflection is done alone, but reflection can also happen in a group. Asking a question of the group (such as “What did our hike mean to you?”) can result in cross pollination of ideas, enabling everyone’s thinking to advance. And reflection can be written. I’ve found that using both group verbal reflection and private written reflection can produce solid results in my efforts to unify program goals and the student’s felt experiences.
Here are some examples of students written reflections, written at the end of a hiking tour of literary sites in England. Our program goals were to synthesize the study of British literature, observation of the landscapes where the writers lived, and personal growth.
Maddie
I remember having a close connection to nature as a child, but for some reason it faded as I grew older. I became involved with other things like school and dance, and as they became more and more of a priority, going outside and being with nature were pushed aside to the point that they didn’t matter at all to me. Occasionally, I would wade in the river outside my home or lie in the sun and read a book, but beyond that, I stopped enjoying going outdoors. It seemed dirty. And there were bugs out there—not like there weren’t spiders inside my house as well. I did feel bad about losing my connection to nature though; losing it was losing a part of my childhood, a wondrous and good part that seemed correlated to my creativity. Regaining that connection was one thing that I wanted to do on this trip, and I think that I have. I’ve realized that I, as a human, am a part of nature, not a separate entity. God created me just as he created trees and mountains; feeling a connection to those things is as natural as feeling a connection to another human being.
Annalee
On our hikes, I confronted my weakest self. I always prided myself on my grit and mental strength in sports. But, hiking is different. Every steep incline reduced me to a teary mantra of I can’t do it. My goal for this trip was to walk every mile. I did it by praying silently, cursing silently and not so silently, and looking to others in the group that pressed on despite the pain.
I didn’t expect to learn how to cope with my faults and inner slacker, but I did. I’m proud that my willpower managed to keep me going and eventually conquer the Annalee that desperately wanted to give up.
I learned that war, even before the world wars, haunts the authors and their work. I studied Wordsworth’s poems in my sophomore year at college and loved the way he spoke of nature and mankind’s relationship with it. It wasn’t until this trip, when I walked through the Wordsworth trust museum, that I realized he didn’t just write about nature. He also wrote about war—the Napoleonic wars. At home, he trained and prepared to fight if the French did a land invasion. It felt like I was meeting a different Wordsworth.
Kurt
Firstly, exploring myself has been a difficult path. I began this trip as a chronically shy, taciturn, and proud man. I isolated myself from others, I would not initiate conversation with others, I would stay away from groups and laughter and camaraderie. I believed that I had no place with such things. I believed that I was a mountain. I came to a point where I had to make a choice, near the river at Kessick. Luckily, or perhaps inevitably, I chose to cease being a mountain and try being a sheep. I chose to open myself up and expose my vulnerabilities and try to be a friend to as many people as I could. And the results have been tremendous.
Conclusions
Using reflective writing can extend the learning into higher cognitive levels and can help participants focus on the social, cultural, and environmental context of the experience.