Table Of Content0-7494-4489-4_FM_i
Experiential
Learning
A Best Practice Handbook
for Educators and Trainers
Second edition
Colin Beard
John P Wilson
London and Philadelphia
0-7494-4489-4_FM_ii
Publisher’s note
Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this
book is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publishers and authors cannot
accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility
for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result
of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or any
of the authors.
First edition published in Great Britain and the United States in 2002 by Kogan Page
Limited entitled The Power of Experiential Learning
Second edition 2006
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism
or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this pub-
lication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic
reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the
undermentioned addresses:
120 Pentonville Road 525 South 4th Street, #241
London N1 9JN Philadelphia PA 19147
United Kingdom USA
www.kogan-page.co.uk
© Colin Beard and John P Wilson, 2002, 2006
The right of Colin Beard and John P Wilson to be identified as the authors of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
ISBN 0 7494 4489 4
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beard, Colin (Colin M.)
Experiential learning : a best practice handbook for educators and trainers / Colin
Beard and John P. Wilson.– 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: The power of experiential learning.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-7494-4489-4
1. Experiential learning—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Active learning—Handbooks,
manuals, etc. 3. Employees—Training of—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Wilson, John P.
(John Peter), 1955 Aug. 11– II. Beard, Colin (Colin M.). Power of experiential learning.
III. Title.
BF318.5.B43 2006
153.1’52—dc22
2006001626
Typeset by Digital Publishing Solutions
Printed and bound in the United States by Thomson-Shore, Inc
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Contents
1. Unlocking powerful learning – a new model 1
Introduction 1; The tumblers 6; An overview of the chapters 9;
Conclusion 14
2. Exploring experiential learning 15
Introduction 15; Defining experiential learning 16; A
meaningful experience 20; Learning is personal 21; Painful
learning 25; Detrimental experiential learning 27; Learning
from mistakes 28; Formal versus experiential learning 29; The
lineage of experiential learning 31; Experience as learning
styles 33; A chronology of experiential learning 35; Challenging
the concept of experiential learning 38; Conclusion 43
3. Facilitation, good practice and ethics 45
Introduction 45; The booming business 46; The deliverers 47;
Experiential provider roles 48; Intruding complicators or
enabling animateurs 51; Wisdom and experience 52;
Dysfunctional and indigenous learning 54; Setting the climate
and conditions 58; Ground rules and values 59; Reviewing self-
practice 61; Ethical behaviour 63; A question of balance 67;
Emotional engineering 69; Ethical models 71; Codes of practice
73; Professional bodies and the professional codes of practice
74; Good practice: the environment 76; Conclusion 78
4. Learning environments: spaces and places 79
Introduction 79; Indoor learning: the new classroom 80;
Outdoor learning 85; Disappearing boundaries: indoor–
outdoor, natural–artificial 86; Reaching out: learning in city
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iv ❚ Contents
space 91; Artificially created learning spaces 92; Pedagogy and
personal development 95; Empathetic strategies and the
outdoor therapeutic ‘effect’ 99; Outdoor environments:
therapeutic experiential learning 101; Sustainable learning
environments 104; Conclusion 105
5. Experiential learning activities 107
Introduction 107; The changing milieu 108; Planned or
unplanned activity? 110; Dramaturgy 112; Innovation,
activities, resources and objects – a simple experiential
typology 113; Adventurous journeys 115; Sequencing learning
activities 119; Mind and body 121; Rules and obstacles 123;
Constructing and deconstructing 124; Telling the story – using
physical objects 125; Conclusion 126
6. Learning activities: exploring reality 127
Introduction 127; What is a real experience? 128; Fantasy 135;
Play and reality 137; Suspending reality: drama and role-
playing 140; Metaphors and storytelling 143; Management
development and cartoons 147; Using photographic images
and computer software 149; Reflections on reality – reading
and writing 150; Rafts and planks… or real projects? 152;
Conclusion 152
7. Working with the senses 155
Introduction 155; Re-awakening the senses 156; Appealing to
the senses: higher education 158; Sensory stimulation in
learning and therapy 165; Inner sensory work: presencing and
anchoring 170; Conclusion 172
8. Experience and emotions 173
Introduction 173; Emotion and experiential learning 174; The
power of the emotional state 179; Emotional waves 181;
Experiencing emotional calm – sorting time 182; Flow learning
185; Experience, learning and ‘identity’ 189; Conclusion 192
9. Working with emotions 193
Introduction 193; The emotional climate – mood setting and
relaxed alertness 194; Overcoming emotion – fear 196;
Mapping and accessing emotions 199; Using trilogies in
emotional work 201; Using humour and other positive
emotions 204; Accessing emotions through popular metaphors
206; Metaphoric intervention 210; Conclusion 212
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Contents ❚ v
10. Experience and intelligence 213
Introduction 213; Working with intelligence 219; Other forms
of intelligence 222; Emotional quotient – EQ 223; Spiritual
quotient – SQ 226; Naturalistic intelligence – NQ 230; The
creative quotient – CQ 232; Conclusion 238
11. Learning and change 239
Introduction 239; Learning and change 240; Theories of
learning: theories of change! 241; The development of reflective
practice 242; Using problems and challenges 245; Reflection-in-
action and reflection-on-action 246; Single and double loop
learning 247; Encouraging conditions for reflection 248; The
danger of formal education and training 251; Critical reflection
251; Action learning 252; The action learning set 256; Timing
and duration of learning sets 259; Problems and action learning
260; Strategies for learning and change 262; Conclusion 264
12. Imagining and experiencing the future 265
Introduction 265; Imagination 267; Imagination versus action
269; Mental fitness for the future 271; Imagining the future 272;
The value of problems 274; Imaginative strategies 277;
Imagination and the child 282; Conclusion 285
References 287
Further reading 303
Index 307
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1
Unlocking powerful
learning – a new model
Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action – we
cannot learn men from books.
(Benjamin Disraeli, 1826)
INTRODUCTION
If you followed the advice of Benjamin Disraeli’s quotation above, you
would not proceed any further than the first page of this book before
returning it to the shelf! However, don’t go away; bear with us as we
explain how this book will offer a new way of thinking about and
organizing the development and delivery of experiential learning.
Disraeli was using his skills as a political orator to polarize the
debate about theory and practice and draw attention to the need to
think and learn through experience. The argument that ‘we cannot
learn men through books’ is an unsustainable one but Disraeli’s
underlying message has a kernel of truth. Traditional learning, with
the teacher or trainer spouting facts and figures and with pupils or
participants regurgitating the information without deeper involve-
ment, is a very ineffective form of learning. A much more effective and
long-lasting form of learning is to involve the learner by creating a
meaningful learning experience.
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2 ❚ Experiential learning
This handbook will enable you to see new ways to unleash some of
the more potent ingredients of learning through experience. It has
much to offer in the search for greater learning efficacy. In order to
free the spirit of learning, whether it be in management education,
corporate training, youth development work, higher education or
schools, it is necessary to explore in much greater detail the nature of
the learning ‘experience’. This is done in Chapter 2 but to provide
greater clarity from the beginning we present a definition:
Experiential learning is the sense-making process of active engagement be-
tween the inner world of the person and the outer world of the environment.
Whilst there are no easy answers in the design of learning experiences,
there are significant areas of knowledge about many of the main in-
gredients that can be used to create new methods. In this chapter we
illustrate this with a model, in the form of a learning combination lock,
which comprises a series of tumblers each designed to illustrate the
almost infinite range of ingredients that can be altered in order to en-
hance learning. Using this visual metaphor of a combination lock with
six tumblers, the potential number of learning permutations is more
than 15 million and it can be further expanded to an almost infinite
number. Whilst we are on our guard to avoid simplistic mechanistic
thinking, we do believe it is robust material and we discuss the
theoretical basis of our thinking, as well as offering many practical
examples to illustrate the value of learning from experience. Moreover,
learning providers are required to understand a very complex process
of experiential learning and that is where this model can help unpick
some of the complexity.
Experience pervades all forms of learning; however, its value is
frequently not recognized or is even disregarded. Active engagement
is one of the basic tenets of experiential learning: experiential learning
undoubtedly involves the ‘whole person’, through thoughts, feelings
and physical activity. The recognition of this ‘whole environment’,
both internally and externally, is important. Experiential learning can
take on many appearances in life, such as recreational or leisure activ-
ities, exhilarating journeys or adventures, experimentation or play. It
can also be in the form of painful events. Heron (2000: 316), in writing
about the facilitation of learning, used a ‘whole person’ approach. He
believed that the perfect life web was never complete, but often torn
and damaged. People, he said, were engaging in a form of action
enquiry throughout their everyday life. ‘This consciousness-in-action
involves, intentionally, both participatory and individuating
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Unlocking powerful learning ❚ 3
functions: feeling and emotion, intuition and imagery, reflection and
discrimination, intention and action.’
The handbook explores both the theory and practice of experiential
learning. It offers an exciting range of illustrative case material from
around the world in an attempt to ‘ground’ this contribution to
contemporary theory. It provides numerous signposts leading to other
sources to draw upon, and we, like other professionals, have ventured
into, borrowed and learnt from many other disciplines in order to
facilitate learning and change. We include ideas and integrating con-
cepts from fields such as psychotherapy, psychology, education and
training, people development, adventure and leisure. The book sug-
gests numerous ways to stimulate people’s senses, and so stimulate
deeper thinking and learning. We offer methods that help people to
see and understand things as if for the first time, even though they may
have undergone the experience before. We also offer experiential tech-
niques that revisit past experiences and allow learners to view them in
a new light: these methods we call retrospective learning. Moving from
the past to the present, we consider methods to improve immediate
learning, which we call concurrent learning. Finally, we investigate the
possibilities of learning through imagination and projecting ideas into
the future; we call this prospective learning.
The book offers techniques that help learners make sense of their
experience, as well as methods to develop and practise new be-
haviours. The techniques include mood setting, drama, creative writ-
ing, art, meditation, environmental modification and routine rituals.
We also help you as developers, educators and trainers to focus on the
design of new ideas and we explore ways to improve professional
practice and ethical responsibility through self-monitoring and feed-
back techniques. Many of the theories and practical methods presented
in this book apply equally to providers and learners; indeed as prac-
titioners, we too are learners, and good practice emanates from our
ability to learn from our own experience.
In order to slowly construct the model called the learning
combination lock, we first explore simple dichotomies and the need
for providers to incorporate the concept of balance in learning activities.
In rejecting dualism there is a need for balance: of energy–tension,
challenge–support, task–process, male–female, indoor–outdoor,
natural–artificial environments and real–simulated activities. These
themes illustrate some of the key factors that present countless oppor-
tunities in the design of experiential learning.
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4 ❚ Experiential learning
Figure 1.1 A simple diagnostic tool – the learning combination lock
We develop many simple models that take the form of waves or
circles, and these are important in our thinking throughout the book.
Waves of energy underpin the daily experience and these waves of
activity influence the basis of experiential programmes. We nurture
and prepare people, energize and engage people, help to support, pro-
vide for or create their experience and then encourage relaxation.
There are surface waves and deeper ones, short ones and long ones.
A novel can be likened to an ocean. The little waves we see lapping the
shore are in fact carried on the waves that are nine ordinary waves long.
These waves are themselves carried by waves that carry nine of them and
these larger waves are similarly carried by waves that carry nine of them.
Some waves in the ocean are miles long.
(Buzan, 2000: 200)
So let us now look at this learning combination lock as a new concep-
tual framework (see Figure 1.1).
For the first time ever, to our knowledge, all the main ingredients
of the learning equation have been brought together in the learning
combination lock. This model is theoretically grounded in the concept
of cognitive processing which is discussed in the next chapter.
