History and Philosophy of Education - Experiential Learning and Essay

History and Philosophy of Education - Experiential Learning and Marketisation of Education - Essay Example In Experiential learning, the question is, does it require the guidance of a practioner in order for learning to take place. Practioners are always necessary in any process of learning, and experiential learning is not an exception. To acquire newknowledge from experience, an individual has to have problem solving skills which willenable him/ herto make decisions. This aspect is essential toenable a studentto apply skillsgained through theexperience undergone while learning (Maxwell, 2011).Experience as an issue in experiential learning is not the main factor thata student can acquire knowledge from. A student might pass through natural processes that might instill knowledge in him. Howeverwithout a guide given, such knowledge will not be helpful to him/ her since with time, skills accumulated, student will not be put into use (Palmer and Cooper, 2003). To Aristotle, passing through an experience, acquiring skills and being unable to implement is not the objective of education. Since by learning, a student has to be able to apply skills gained in real life situations and challenges (Curren, 2000). The applicative part of skill acquisition is the problem and for a student to be able to implement a skill he/she needs guidanceand this normally comes from the practitioners.The idea of learning through experience has a long historical perspective and it isJohn Deweywho proposed it. Dewey (1998) states experience is an integral part of learning; however practitionersalso play an important rolethat is to ensurestudents are able to apply knowledge gained from an experiencein different perspectives of their lives. This notion of Dewey, clearly agrees with my views of experimentation as an aspect of experiential learning. It is necessary for practitioners to introduce thecurriculum whenstudents are taken to the outdoorlearningwith supervision from educators, as it would allow students to learnfrom a series of adventures where real life examples. Another aspect from Dewey (1998)involves the issue of reflection, where student must engage actively in the activity took place and toreflect on the experience later to grasp the new ideas instilled. Based on this, experiential leaning involves experience and reflection and therefore knowledge and skills are gained through various circumstances, an individual passes through which determines the nature of skills attained and only after effective reflection guided by a practitioner.Reflection involves paying attention to the ideas leant and thus consolidating them. Reflection as an issue of experiential learning is not beneficial without supervision. There are many aspects of reflective tendencies during the process of experiential learning. However, it has some drawback (Palmer and Cooper, 2003); student will not think deeper into the meaning of the experience passed as he/shemight take it as play attained. Also it might involvelack of concentration from the student. According to Kolb, learning is a multidime nsional process (Palmer and Cooper, 2003) and it involvesfour stages that are toexperience, observe, reflect and experiment. Kolb advocates for supervision of a learner during the process of reflection. After a period of time, learning will have taken place as students had gained an educative experience with useful guides given from