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EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING INADULT EDUCATIONP. C. CandyPublished online: 07 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: P. C. Candy (1980) EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING INADULT EDUCATION, Studies in Continuing Education, 3:5, 59-72, DOI:10.1080/0158037800030505

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EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN ADULT EDUCATION

P. C. Candy *

* Lecturer in Adult and Continuing Education, Adelaide College of Artsand Education, Underdale, South Australia

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There is a tendency for educationalists to superimpose onthis dimension, another distinction, which is that betweenrote and meaningful learning, or in other words, to claimthat what is learned by discovery is of necessity meaning-ful, whereas expository teaching is always related to rotelearning. As Boydell points out, these two dimensions arereally independent of each other, and may be placed ontwo axes thus yielding the following 2 x 2 matrix:

Rote

Meaningful

Expository

1

3

Discovery

2

4

Figure 1.

Into each of these four empty boxes we may put thenames of different methods of teaching and learning, oralternatively, different theoretical positions which applyto the combination of rote versus meaningful learning andexpository versus discovery teaching. Boydell goes on topoint out that there is probably a place for all four modes,though teachers and others responsible for helping peopleto learn are more often concerned with the 'meaningful'dimension, especially as it is usually the most difficult toachieve. What are the defining characteristics of 'meaningful'? Thomas and Harri-Augstein, in their paper entitledLearning to Learn: The Personal Construction andExchange of Meaning', write:

The learner almost certainly values changes in both his experienceand his actions which the teacher thinks of less highly. Thus for theauthors, the construct 'As viewed by the teacher v. as viewed by thelearner' is an important differentiation to be made in thinking andfeeling about learning... Most of the supposed theories of learning aresolely concerned with the conditions under which teacher-definedlearning takes place, and methods for enhancing the purposes of theteacher... It is only when the purposes of the learner are used as abasis for assessing what learning has taken place, that an approach can

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be made to understanding the individual processes of learning....The construction of meaning may not be totally intentional. Many

retrospectively valued changes take place unplanned by either anoutside agency or the learner himself. Thus another important dimens-ion for construing learning is: 'As assessed against the original purpose(if any) v. As assessed retrospectively'.

...Thus, if learning is an inference, 'who' makes the inference andagainst 'what' criteria, will greatly influence how the process of learn-ing is understood. The 2 x 2 category system yielded by our two con-structs serves as a useful device for clarifying thinking on this topic.

Teacher's view

Learner's view

Originalpurpose

Teacher original

(TO)

Learner original

(L)

Retrospectiveassessment

Teacher retrospective(TR)

Learner retrospective(LR)

Figure 2.

Most learning in education falls into the TO Category. The teachersets the purpose of the exercise and the learning is measured by refer-ence to what he set out to teach.

Most personally valued ('meaningful') learning falls into the categoryLR. The learner recognises after the event that something significanthas happened. Then and only then does the learner set about evaluat-ing what has happened....

(Thomas and Harri-Augstein, 1977, p.92-4)

The following quotation gives an example of what is prob-ably meant above:

(Meaningful learning sometimes occurs by accident); this refers to thetype of situation I sometimes find myself in when listening to alecture. All of a sudden, something that the speaker says 'rings bells'with me, it very much relates to some of my own ideas, my ownproblems, issues, goals. As a result, I start to mull over what he's said,to work on its implications. As far as the actual lecturer is concerned,he's lost me. I no longer hear what he is saying. In his terms, I'm nolonger paying attention. But as far as I am concerned, at the end ofthe session, I'm quite likely to go away with some very real, helpfulcentral learning. I feel as though I've achieved something.

(Boydell, 1976, p.28)

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This little sequence helps to explain why it is so difficultto arrange meaningful learning using expository methodsalone. For a start, there is the whole complex problem oflanguage - the fact that learners may 'hear' something quitedifferent to what the lecturer 'said'. Secondly, even if suchsemantic problems could be overcome, the fact remains thatdifferent individuals organise and structure information inidosyncratic ways (see, e.g. Kelly, 1955) and are thereforelikely to place totally different constructions on what theyhear. John Fowles, in his brilliant novel Daniel Martin,speculates on how difficult it is for a writer to convey to hisreaders precisely what he has in mind:

I can't really evoke (the past) in words, can only hope to awakensome analogous experience in other memories and sensitivities....

How much more difficult it is in a teaching/learning sit-uation for the 'teacher' to convey, intact, a body of meaningful information, especially if that meaning includes'feelings'. For this reason, claims Boydell, what he calls'then and there' (as opposed to 'here and now') experientiallearning, is to a great extent only valid for cognitive - ratherthan affective or conative - learning. (Boydell, 1976, p.25).

After this lengthy, but necessary, excursion into the areaof different types of learning, it is now appropriate toreturn to the question of experiential learning, per se. Asits name implies, the essential characteristic is that itinvolves learning from some sort of experience and, as wasstated at the outset, this is hardly a new notion as by farthe greatest proportion of adult learning is from experienceof one sort or another.It seems that the phrase has come to be used in two

distinct, but related contexts. To some (perhaps even most)educationalists, it refers to methods of classroom teachingwhich involve more than just the intellect of the learners -structured experiences, games and simulations, participativeapproaches, discovery learning, and so on. More recently,and particularly in American literature, it is taken to refer toexperience-based learning, mainly outside the classroomsetting. As Boud and Pascoe observe:

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This is a new term for an old practice, as such learning has alwaystaken place, but it is used now to place greater weight on the edu-cational rather than the purely work aspect of activity outside theeducational institution.

(Boud and Pascoe, 1978, p.l)

Whilst the actual precise meaning of the term needs to beinferred from the context, the underlying notion in bothcases is the same:

Experiential learning means learning in which the learner isdirectly in touch with the realities being studied. It is contrastedwith learning in which the learner only reads about, hears about, talksor writes about these realities. Experiential learning typically involvesnot merely observing the phenomonon being studied, but also doingsomething with it: testing the dynamics of the reality to learn moreabout it, or applying the thing learned to achieve some desired result.

(Keeton, 1978 cit Jenks et al, 1978, p.25).Several researchers have attempted to explicate the actual

processes which learners go through when they leam fromexperience. One useful model is proposed by Kolb and hiscolleagues who argue a four stage cycle as follows:

CONCRETEEXPERIENCE

ACTIVEEXPERIMENTATION

REFLECTIVEOBSERVATION

ABSTRACTCONCEPTUALISATION

Figure 3. Kolb et al's Experiential Learning Cycle

Kolb writes:By combining the characteristics of learning and problem-solving andconceiving of them as a single process, we can come closer to under-standing how it is that man generates from his experience concepts,rules, and principles to guide his behaviour in new situations, and howhe modifies these concepts in order to improve their effectiveness.This process is both active and passive, concrete and abstract. It canbe conceived of as a four stage cycle:

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1. concrete experience is followed by2. observation and reflection which leads to3. the formation of abstract concepts and generalisations which

lead to4. hypotheses to be tested in future action which in turn leads

to new experiences.There are several observations to be made about this model of thelearning process. First this learning cycle is continuously recurring inliving human beings. Man continuously tests his concepts in exper-ience and modifies them as a result of his observation of the exper-ience. In a very important sense, all learning is re-learning and alleducation is re-education.

Secondly, the direction that learning takes is governed by one's feltneeds and goals. We seek experiences that are related to our goals,interpret them in the light of our goals, and form concepts and testimplications of these concepts that are relevant to our self-needs andgoals.

(Kolb, Rubin and McIntyre, 1971, pp28,29)

This description ties in remarkably well with the work ofWight who defines experiential learning in terms of a modelwhich begins with the experience, followed by reflection, discuss-ion, analysis and evaluation of the experience. The assumption isthat we seldom learn from experience unless we asses the exper-ience, assigning our own meaning in terms of our own goals, aims,ambitions and expectations.

(Wight, 1970)

Herein lies at least a partial answer as to why some sit-uations do lead to learning, whereas others do not. Thelearner simply may not, for some reason or other, perceivethe situation as one from which he or she can learn. Thus,if an experience is to result in the possibility of learning,the first prerequisite is to ensure that the participants atleast recognise and acknowledge the potential for learning.As Boot and Boxer point out:

...experience alone is not learning and does not guarantee that learningwill take place. It is no use providing people with 'experiences' eitherin the classroom, or in the workplace, in the hope that they will learn.Whether or not they learn will depend on what they 'do' with thatexperience.

(Boot and Boxer, 1979, p.l)

The question of precisely what people 'do' with an exper-ience in order to say that they have learned is, of course,

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a vexed one. One thing is fairly certain, there is anenormous leap, in Kolb's Model, from 'ConcreteExperience' to 'Abstract Conceptualisation'. Boydellattempts some fairly sophisticated model building in hismonograph Experiential Learning, and Boot and Boxerhave done a great deal of work on a Theory of ReflectiveLearning. Wight seems to offer a useful insight when hesuggests that learning comes from an experience when it isassigned a personal meaning; from this process, Wightwrites, comes

the insights, the discoveries, and understandings. The pieces fall intoplace, and the experience takes on added meaning in relation to otherexperiences. All this is then conceptualised, synthesised and inte-grated into the individual's system of constructs which he imposeson the world, through which he views, perceives, categorises, evaluatesand seeks experience.

(Wight, 1970)

Such learning is hardly the province of the passive, dis-engaged or sceptical. It is the hallmark of an inquiring,active and systematic learner, someone trying to make senseof experience, both in relation to past experience and as aguide to future action.

...in the last few years, we have seen a paradigm shift within psycho-logy and education resulting in a renewed interest in the individual'sactive processing. Knowledge is seen as being produced by transactionbetween man and his environment and an emphasis is now placedupon an active man reaching out to make sense of his universe byengaging in the reconstruction and interpretation of his own exper-iences. Following in the traditions of Rousseau and Dewey, moderneducationists maintain that learning should be directly related tothe interests of the person; motivation to learn should come fromwithin the person rather than knowledge being imposed upon him.

(Pope and Shaw, 1979, p.4)

In recent years there has been increasing attention to theinnovative work of the late Professor George Kelly, and hisPsychology of Personal Constructs. Kelly postulated a viewof man-as-scientist, a notion that each of us is engaged in alife-long systematic process of attempting to make sense ofour environment, and in particular, of our experiences.There is a clear link here between Kelly's notion of a unique,

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phenomenological construct system, (which acts both as aperceptual filter to experiences and other external stimuli,and as a framework for making sense of what is perceived orexperienced), and the idea of individual learning styles orcognitive styles. Kolb, in particular, has proposed that thelearning cycle is not merely a model of the learning process,but can give insights into individual strengths andweaknesses, preferences and aversions in the learning sit-uation. He writes:

since the learning process is directed by individual needs and goals,learning styles become highly individual in both direction and process.For example, a mathematician may come to place great emphasis onabstract concepts, whereas a poet may value concrete experience morehighly. A manager may be primarily concerned with active applicationof concepts, whereas a naturalist may develop his observational skillshighly. Each of us in a more personal way develops a learning stylethat has some weak points and strong points. We may jump into exper-iences but fail to observe the lessons to be derived from these exper-iences; we may form concepts but fail to test their validity.

(Kolb, Rubin and McIntyre, 1971, p.29)

The process whereby each individual's construct system iserected, maintained and modified is the subject of Kelly'stwo volume Psychology of Personal Constructs, published in1955. There is also an expanding body of literature basedon Kelly's original work, including books and articles byBannister and Mair, Bannister and Fransella, Boot andBoxer, Shaw and Pope, Thomas and Harri-Augstein andmany others. In a paper entitled A Personal ConstructApproach to Adult Learning, Candy has attempted to drawtogether some of the main themes from these variousauthors.

One of the most appealing aspects of Kelly's work is hisview, which ties in neatly with an early statement in thispaper, that experiences of life, and learning are one and thesame process. He writes:

The burden of our assumption is that learning is not a special classof psychological processes, it is synonymous with any and all psycho-logical processes. It is not something that happens to a person onoccasion; it is what makes him a person in the first place.

(Kelly, 1955, p.75)

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This point bears out one of the most persuasive justificat-ions for the use of experiential approaches, namely, theinterdependence of living, and learning, and in particular thehumanist's insistence that meaningful learning, of necessity,requires the involvement of the whole person, not theintellect alone.

Carl Rogers, whose ideas on humanistic education havehad far reaching implications for the practice of adult edu-cation, writes:Self initiated learning which involves the whole person as the learner -feelings as well as intellect - is the most lasting and pervasive. We havediscovered this in psychotherapy, where it is the totally involvedlearning of oneself which is most effective. This is not learning whichtakes place 'only from the neck up'. It is 'gut level' type of learningwhich is profound and pervasive. It can also occur in the tentative dis-covery of a new self-generated idea or in the learning of a difficultskill, or in the act of artistic creation - a painting, a poem, a sculpture.It is the whole person who 'lets himself go' in these creative learnings.An important element in these situations is that the learner knowsit is his own learning and thus can hold to it or relinquish it in the faceof a more profound learning without having to turn to some author-ity for corroboration of his judgement.

(Rogers, C., 1969)

This theme is elaborated by More in his book Emotionsand Adult Learning, where he argues the absolute import-ance of allowing for, and indeed encouraging, learners toinvolve themselves totally, including their emotions, in thelearning experience. Boydell quotes Davis in saying:

learning is a dynamic, action process, so the trainee learns best byparticipation. If only a man's ears are involved (for example, lecture)much less is learned than if his eyes, muscles, thinking processes andfeelings are involved. This means that participative methods are espec-ially desirable for human relations training.

(Davis, 1972, cit. Boydell, 1976, p.19)

The usefulness of participative or experiential techniques,however, is certainly not limited to human relations subjectareas.Wexler takes the humanistic viewpoint even further. Not

content merely with the notion of involving 'the wholeperson', Wexler argues that the 'fully functioning' or 'selfactualising' learner actually engages in experiences at aqualitatively higher level. He writes:

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Self actualisation is seen as the characteristic propensity to engagein an optimal mode of experience. Although man generally possessesthe capacity to use his own cognitive processes for generating newexperience and change, few individuals utilise it effectively... Thechief characteristic of the self actualised person is that he will con-tinually be construing new facets of meaning in his experience...In processing and organising information from his external environ-ment, the self actualised person will distinguish new facets in whathe takes in through his senses... He creates new experience from hisenvironment by allocating his attention and processing capacitiesto distinguishing and synthesising new facets of meaning in it.

(Wexler, 1974cit. Boydell, 1976)

Thus experiential learning has the potential, at least, toelevate the whole learning process to a new more meaningfullevel, and to engage the learner fully in extracting maximuminsights from the experience.

According to Boydell,...all the techniques subsumed under the heading (experientiallearning) have two features in common:-1. they lead to meaningful learning, and2. this learning is achieved by the learner sorting things out for

himself - i.e. he restructures his perceptual experiences, andhence gains insight or learning.

In experiential learning, many of the themes and concernsaddressed by adult educators seem' to be dealt with. Thehumanistic notion of involving the whole person (see, forexample, Rogers) forms one basic tenet of the practice. Thedesire to enhance transferability of learning from learningsituation to real life applications is another major concernof adult educators, and one which is met head on by exper-iential techniques. The concept of life-long learning, and inparticular of an indissoluble bond between learning andliving, is the very foundation of learning from experience,and the perennial concern with encouraging significant andmeaningful learning rather than trivial and superficial com-prehension, is likewise tackled in an experiential approach.Finally, the point that people learn in a variety of ways, andthat they structure their knowledge in unique and idio-syncratic ways is met more directly by experiential learningthan by what Jens refers to as 'didactic/symbolic' instruct-

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ional approaches. According to Boud and Pascoe, after anexhaustive review of literature, there are three definingcharacteristics of the experiential approach, viz:

(a) the involvement of each individual student.Learning activities need to engage the full attention of a

student if they are to be regarded as experiential. That is,the whole person needs to be involved, not just the cognit-ion, but expectations, desires, affect, emotions have to berecognised, and, where appropriate, be incorporated as partof the learning activities which are planned. A spectrum ofinvolvement can be recognised, with the limited engage-ment of a student listening to a didactic exposition in alecture being found near one end, and the engagement ofthe intellect, body, emotion and interpersonal response ofa student taking part in a human relations-type simulationin co-operation with others being found towards the otherend of the spectrum.

(b) the correspondence of the learning activity.That is, the degree to which learning tasks simulate act-

ivities outside the classroom or educational institution. Themost obvious way in which learning can take place with ahigh level of correspondence to activities outside the instit-ution is through field - or community - placements.However, experiential learning does not necessarily takeplace just by working in a particular location. Experienceper se does not lead to learning. Field or communityplacements, or whatever local term is used for this activity,need to be carefully planned if their potential as centres forlearning is to be effectively utilised. What counts is thequality of the experience which occurs, not its location. Insome situations it might be more educationally valid to usea detailed simulation under controlled conditions than toplace a student into a context in which there are so manymundane demands that the crucial learning experiencesbecome diluted and lost amongst the day-to-day routine.

(c) learner control over the learning experience.If learning is to be closely related to the experience of the

learner and based upon the prior knowledge and back-

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ground of the learner, then the learners themselves need tohave control over the experience in which they are engaged.This is not to imply that they should exercise this controlin isolation from others, particularly teachers or expertpractitioners, but that if students are to genuinely own theexperience and integrate it into their own mode of operat-ion in the world then they need not only to be involved, butto experience the results of their own decisions. An exampleof a low level of learner control over decision-making is thetraditional course in almost any organisation. In this alldecisions about aims and objectives, course content,methods of learning, and assessment procedures are takenunilaterally by staff. Examples of high levels of learnercontrol can be found in those courses in which decisionsare taken jointly by staff and students and in whichstudents are committed to the decisions which they make.These characteristics are not, of course, independent of

each other. The degree of involvement of the self is connect-ed with the amount of control that can be exercised by anindividual. No rational individual would give themselvesover to the control of others and then allow themselvesto be fully involved in the activities which were provided forthem at all levels of their being.

It may be useful however to represent these character-istics as though they were independent dimensions, as inFigure 4.

They conclude:

A teacher who wishes to improve the quality of learning activitiescan address any of the three characteristics or all of them together.The art of the teacher, and the challenge for the student is to arriveat the mixture of activities which is most compatible with their basicaims.

(Boud and Pascoe, 1978, p.63)

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BOOT, R.L. and BOXER, P. 'Reflective Learning', Paper presentedat the Conference 'Advances in Management Education', UMIST,Manchester, April 1979.BOUD, D. and PASCOE, J. Experiential Learning: Developments inAustralian Post-Secondary Education. Australian Consortium onExperiential Education, 1978.BOYDELL, T.H. Experiential Learning. Manchester MonographNo.5, Department of Adult Education, University of Manchester,1976.CANDY, P.C. A Personal Construct Approach to Adult Learning.Adelaide College of the Arts and Education, 1980.CRAIK, G.L. The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties. Belland Daldy, London, 1866.JENKS, C.L. et al Experience Based Learning and the FacilitativeRole of Teachers. Far West Laboratory for Educational Researchand Development, San Francisco, 1978.KEETON, M. 'A Boom in Experiential Learning', in Learning byExperience... What, Why, How. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1978.KELLY, G.A. The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Vols. 1 and2, Norton, New York, 1955.KIDD, J. R. How Adults Learn. Association Press, New York, 1973.KNOWLES, M.S. Self-directed Learning: A Guide for Learners andTeachers. New York, Association Press, 1975.

KNOX, A. B. Adult Development and Learning. Jossey-Bass, SanFrancisco, 1977.KOLB, D.A., RUBIN, I.M. and McINTYRE, J. M. OrganisationalPsychology: An Experiential Approach. Prentice Hall, 1971.MORE, W.S. Emotions and Adult Learning. Saxon House, Farn-borough, 1974.POPE, M. and SHAW, M.L.G. 'Negotiation in Learning', Paperpresented at the Third International Congress on Personal ConstructPsychology, Breukelen, July, 1979.

THOMAS, L.F. and HARRI-AUGSTEIN, E.S. 'Learning to Learn:the Personal Construction and Exchange of Meaning', in Howe,M.J.A., Adult Learning: Psychological Research and Applications.Wiley, London, 1977.TOUGH, A. The Adult's Learning Prospects. Ontario Institute forStudies in Education, Toronto, 1971.

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