Experiential Learning Theory

Synonyms

Experiential learning; Experience based learning; Learning from experience

Definition

Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) seeks to pass on the legacy of those twentieth century scholars – notably William James, John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Carl Jung, Paulo Freire, Carl Rogers, and others – who placed experience at the center of the learning process, envisioning an educational system that was learner centered. ELT is a dynamic view of learning based on a learning cycle driven by the resolution of the dual dialectics of action/reflection and experience/abstraction. It is a holistic theory that defines learning as the major process of human adaptation involving the whole person.

Theoretical Background

Experiential learning theory draws on the work of prominent twentieth century scholars who gave experience a central role in their theories of human learning and development – notably William James, John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Carl Jung, Paulo Freire, Carl Rogers, and others (Fig. 1) – to develop a dynamic, holistic model of the process of learning from experience and a multi-dimensional model of adult development. From their varied professions and cultural perspectives, these men, while standing at the boundaries of their fields and the traditional educational establishment, have challenged and inspired us to a better way of learning. While their theories have resulted in many profound changes in how we think about learning and education, the full implications of their insights are yet to be realized.

Experiential Learning Theory. Fig. 1

Foundational scholars of experiential learning

David Kolb (1984) created Experiential Learning Theory to unify the contributions and insights of these scholars into an explicit and coherent framework based both on the common perspectives they share and the unique contributions they have made to our understanding of experiential learning. ELT integrates the works of the foundational experiential learning scholars around six propositions that they all share:

Learning is best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes. Although punctuated by knowledge milestones, learning does not end at an outcome, nor is it always evidenced in performance. Rather, learning occurs through the course of connected experiences. As Dewey suggests, “…education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience: … the process and goal of education are one and the same thing” (1897, p. 79).

All learning is re-learning. Learning is best facilitated by a process that draws out the learners’ beliefs and ideas about a topic so that they can be examined, tested, and integrated with new, more refined ideas. Piaget called this proposition constructivism – individuals construct their knowledge of the world based on their experience.

Learning requires the resolution of conflicts between dialectically opposed modes of adaptation to the world. Conflict, differences, and disagreement are what drive the learning process. In the process of learning one is called upon to move back and forth between opposing modes of reflection and action and feeling and thinking.

Learning is a holistic process of adaptation. Learning is not just the result of cognition but involves the integrated functioning of the total person – thinking, feeling, perceiving, and behaving. It encompasses other specialized models of adaptation from the scientific method to problem solving, decision making, and creativity. As such, ELT is applicable not only in the formal education classroom but in all arenas of life. The process of learning from experience is ubiquitous, present in human activity everywhere all the time. The holistic nature of the learning process means that it operates at all levels of human society from the individual, to the group, to organizations, and to society as a whole.

Learning results from synergetic transactions between the person and the environment. In Piaget’s terms, learning occurs through equilibration of the dialectic processes of assimilating new experiences into existing concepts and accommodating existing concepts to new experience. Following Lewin’s famous formula that behavior is a function of the person and the environment, ELT holds that learning is influenced by characteristics of the person and the learning environment.

Learning is the process of creating knowledge. ELT proposes a constructivist theory of learning whereby social knowledge is created and recreated in the personal knowledge of the learner. This stands in contrast to the “transmission” model on which much current educational practice is based where pre-existing fixed ideas are transmitted to the learner.

ELT defines learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience” (Kolb 1984, p. 41). The ELT model portrays two dialectically related modes of grasping experience – Concrete Experience (CE) and Abstract Conceptualization (AC) – and two dialectically related modes of transforming experience – Reflective Observation (RO) and Active Experimentation (AE). Experiential learning is a process of constructing knowledge that involves a creative tension among the four learning modes that is responsive to contextual demands. This process is portrayed as an idealized learning cycle or spiral where the learner “touches all the bases” – experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting – in a recursive process that is sensitive to the learning situation and what is being learned. Immediate or concrete experiences are the basis for observations and reflections. These reflections are assimilated and distilled into abstract concepts from which new implications for action can be drawn. These implications can be actively tested and serve as guides in creating new experiences (Fig. 2).

Experiential Learning Theory. Fig. 2

The cycle of experiential learning

In their theories of experiential learning, William James and Paulo Freire describe their views about the integration of these of the concrete/abstract and action/reflection dialectics. William James proposed radical empiricism as a new philosophy, reality, and mind which resolved the conflicts between nineteenth century rationalism and empiricism, the philosophies of idealism and materialism. For James, everything begins and ends in the continuous flux and flow of experience. His philosophy of radical empiricism was based on two co-equal and dialectically related ways of knowing the world: “knowledge of acquaintance” based on direct perception and “knowledge about” based on mediating conception. In radical empiricism, direct perception has primacy since all concepts derive their validity from connection to sense experience. Concepts, however, have priority in controlling human action because they often enable us to predict the future and achieve our desires. James (1977) draws attention to the importance of this co-equal relationship when he says:

We thus see clearly what is gained and what is lost when percepts are translated into concepts. Perception is solely of the here and now; conception is of the like and unlike, of the future, and of the past, and of the far away. But this map of what surrounds the present, like all maps, is only a surface; its features are but abstract signs and symbols of things that in themselves are concrete bits of sensible experience. We have but to weigh extent against content, thickness against spread, and we see that for some purposes the one, for other purposes the other, has the higher value. Who can decide off-hand which is absolutely better to live and to understand life? We must do both alternately, and a man can no more limit himself to either than a pair of scissors can cut with a single one of its blades (p. 243).

While the conceptualizing/experiencing dialectic described by James is recognized by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, by stressing the importance of naming one’s own experience in dialogue with others, he and other critical theorists give primary emphasis to praxis, the transformative dialectic between reflection and action – reflection informed by action and action informed by reflection. He writes powerfully about the dynamics of this dialectic:

As we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon… Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed – even in part – the other immediately suffers…. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating ‘blah’…. On the other hand, if action is emphasized exclusively, to the detriment of reflection, the word is converted into activism. The latter action for action’s sake negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible (1993, pp. 75–78).

Important Scientific Research and Open Questions

ELT was developed following Lewin’s plan for the creation of scientific knowledge by conceptualizing phenomena through formal, explicit, testable theory. In his approach, before a system can be fully useful the concepts in it have to be defined in a way that (1) permits the treatment of both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of phenomena in a single system, (2) adequately represents the conditional-genetic (or causal) attributes of phenomena, (3) facilitates the measurement (or operational definition) of these attributes, and (4) allows both generalization to universal laws and concrete treatment of the individual case. A theory developed by this process can be a powerful instrument for stimulating and focusing scholarly research conversation.

Since its first statement in 1971 there have been many studies using ELT to advance the theory and practice of experiential learning. Since ELT is a holistic theory of learning that identifies learning style differences among different academic specialties, it is not surprising to see that ELT research is highly interdisciplinary, addressing learning and educational issues in many fields. An analysis of the 1,004 entries in the 1999 bibliography shows 207 studies in management, 430 in education, 104 in information science, 101 in psychology, 72 in medicine, 63 in nursing, 22 in accounting, and 5 in law. About 55% of this research has appeared in refereed journal articles, 20% in doctoral dissertations, 10% in books and book chapters, and 15% in conference proceedings, research reports, and others. Since 2000, ELT research in these fields around the world has more than doubled. The current experiential learning theory bibliographies (Kolb and Kolb 2010a, b) include over 2,500 entries.

Included are research studies from every region of the world with many contributions coming from the USA, Canada, Brazil, the UK, China, India, Australia, Japan, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Thailand. These studies support the cross-cultural validity of ELT and the KLSI and also support practical applicability across cultures. The KLSI has been translated into many languages including, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Dutch, German, Swedish, Chinese, Romanian, Persian, Thai, and Japanese. The pragmatic value of the holistic ELT framework for understanding cultural differences has been shown in a number of studies on cross-cultural management.

There have been two comprehensive reviews of the ELT literature, one qualitative and one quantitative. In 1991, Hickox extensively reviewed the theoretical origins of ELT and qualitatively analyzed 81 studies that focused on the application of the ELT model as well as on the application of the concept of learning style in accounting and business education, helping professions, medical professions, post-secondary education, and teacher education. She concluded that overall 61.7% of the studies supported ELT, 16.1% showed mixed support, and 22.2% did not support ELT. In 1994, Iliff conducted a meta-analysis of 101 quantitative LSI studies culled from 275 dissertations and 624 articles that were qualitative, theoretical, and quantitative studies of ELT and the Kolb Learning Style Inventory (KLSI, Kolb 2005). Using Hickox’s evaluation format he found that 49 studies showed strong support for the LSI, 40 showed mixed support, and 12 studies showed no support. About half of the 101 studies reported sufficient data on the LSI scales to compute effect sizes via meta-analysis. Most studies reported correlations that fell in the 0.2–0.5 range for the LSI scales. In conclusion, Iliff suggested that the magnitude of these statistics is not sufficient to meet standards of predictive validity, while noting that the LSI was not intended to be a predictive psychological test like IQ, GRE, or GMAT. The LSI was originally developed as a self-assessment exercise and a means for construct validation of ELT. Judged by the standards of construct validity ELT has been widely accepted as a useful framework for learning centered educational innovation, including instructional design, curriculum development, and life-long learning. Academic field and job classification studies viewed as a whole also show a pattern of results consistent with the ELT structure of knowledge theory. Most of the debate and critique in the ELT/LSI literature has centered on the psychometric properties of the LSI. Results from this research have been of great value in revising the LSI in 1985, in 1999, and again in 2005. Recent critique has been more focused on the theory than the instrument examining the intellectual origins and underlying assumptions of ELT from what might be called a critical theory perspective where the theory is seen as individualistic, cognitivist, and technological (e.g., Vince 1998; Holman 1997; Hopkins 1993). Kayes (2002) has reviewed these and other critics of ELT and offered his own critique of the critics. He suggests that critics have overlooked the role of Vygotsky’s social constructivist learning theory in the ELT theory of development and the role of personal knowledge and social knowledge in experiential learning. He proposes an extension of ELT based on Lacan’s poststructuralist analysis that elaborates the fracture between personal and social knowledge and the role that language plays in shaping experience.

Cross-References

Dewey, John

Experiential Learning Spaces

Experiential Learning Spiral

James, William (1842–1910)

Kolb’s Learning Styles

Kurt Lewin

Learning Identity

Learning Style

Meta-cognitive Experiential Learning

Piaget, Jean