Experiential Learning Advocates Have Had It Wrong For Decades
Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2016 2:11 pm
Malkin Dare writes in the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/malkin-dar ... 81920.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/malkin-dar ... 81920.html
Experiential Learning Advocates Have Had It Wrong For Decades
...A modern-day case in point is the widespread belief among North American educators that children learn better when they receive minimal guidance from their teachers. This belief has had a powerful impact on schools and the education our children are receiving, and not in a good way. There is considerable evidence that minimal guidance techniques are failing students -- plunging test scores, millions of functionally illiterate and functionally innumerate high school graduates, and loud complaints from unhappy parents, employers and postsecondary institutions.
The concept of providing students with minimal guidance has been around for at least 50 years, but most people are not aware of its longevity because it keeps changing its name every 10 years or so when its poor results can no longer be ignored. At first, back in the '60s, the minimal-guidance approach was called "discovery learning," but that name soon gave way to "experiential learning," which in turn became "problem-based learning" and then "inquiry learning." Now it's "constructivist learning." Remarkably, every time the wheel turns the newly fired up passionate advocates of the latest iteration appear to be unaware of its long history of failure...