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Re: the future of linear process models in outdoor learning Hi All – I was just wanting to add a bit more Dewey stuff to a great discussion with fantastic posts

The “logical version of pragmatism” (Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic, 1916, p. 331) that Dewey espoused (and which we often employ in support of models of experiential learning) was also complemented by his notion of “esthetic experience” (Dewey, Art as Experience, 1934, p. 274), which we rarely hear mentioned in discourses associated with experiential learning/education.

“Esthetic experience is experience in its integrity. Had not the term ‘pure’ been so often abused in philosophic literature, had it not been so often employed to suggest that there is something alloyed, impure, in the very nature of experience and to denote something beyond experience, we might say that esthetic experience is pure experience. For it is experience freed from the forces that impede and confuse its development as experience; freed, that is, from factors that subordinate an experience as it is directly had to something beyond itself. To esthetic experience, then, the philosopher must go to understand what experience is” (Art as experience, p. 274).

Aesthetic experience, experience directly had, “immediate” experience, was a central problem for Dewey in his philosophizing. Such experience was characterized not by reflective thinking, but by affective or “qualitative thinking” (Qualitative thought, 1930, p. 18) - i.e., thinking as feeling, or feeling as a form of thinking (“non-reflective”  thinking [Essays in Experimental Logic, 1916, p. 137fn]). If we take Dewey’s “general features of reflective experience” (Democracy and Education, 1916, p. 176), which expressed his logical version of pragmatism (and supports models of experiential learning), we can glimpse how steps 1 and 5 are concerned with emergence of a problem within aesthetic experience, and return to aesthetic experience. Dewey’s sense of a situation is important here.

“They are (i) perplexity, confusion, doubt, due to the fact that one is implicated in an incomplete situation whose full character is not yet determined; (ii) a conjectural anticipation – a tentative interpretation of the given elements, attributing to them a tendency to effect certain consequences; (iii) a careful survey (examination, inspection, exploration, analysis) of all attainable consideration which will define and clarify the problem in hand; (iv) a consequent elaboration of the tentative hypothesis to make it more precise and more consistent, because squaring with a wider range of facts; (v) taking one stand upon the projected hypothesis as a plan of action which is applied to the existing state of affairs: doing something overtly to bring about the anticipated result, and thereby testing the hypothesis” (Democracy and education, p. 176).

So the process is not linear as A to B, but circular as A to A’, anchored in aesthetic experience (A). Dewey grappled with this notion of aesthetic experience but was hampered by a linear sense of time. A linear sense of time renders immediate experience as ineffable; “the immediacy of experience is ineffable” (Experience and nature, p. 73), as any reflective thinking (analysis) of it is always analysis of something in the past. In other words, immediate experience is not immediately accessible if time is only thought as linear. However a non-linear, non-processual sense of time, time as understood phenomenologically by Heidegger, does enable further thinking, qualitative thinking (phenomenological), of aesthetic experience, of being-there (Dasein). In this sense Dasein is aesthetic experience. It is not non-linear in the sense of being complex (as this is still a cause-effect way of thinking as in reflective experience) but rather as simple – the simple aesthetic unity of our being-there as we go about our lives every day (before and after any need for problem solving). Heidegger acknowledged that the simple is the most difficult.

In education, Dewey’s aesthetic experience was expressed in his notions of occupation and interest, which he had difficulty communicating because they were perceived to be vocational education as we know it today, or interest as sugar coating and pandering. But this is not what he meant (as we know). Vocational education was education as preparation, anathema to Dewey’s understanding of education. Yet Dewey espoused “education through occupations” (Democracy and education, p. 361) as how education should be conducted. If we think of experiential education in this way, as anchored in an interest as occupation, aesthetic experience, from within which the problems that participants (as those engaged in an occupation – “the experience”) encounter emerge, then this may help us to better understand what it is we do. Learning is then phenomenological building of be-ing (aesthetic experience), as well as construction of knowledge (reflective experience). Both are held together in communion in the phenomenon of experience: phenomenology and pragmatism; aesthetic experience and reflective (scientific) experience.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on a bit; hope it makes some sense. But I think it is important to note that discourses of experiential learning/education really only scratch the surface of Dewey’s philosophizing.

Cheers

John Quay



On 8/9/10 8:56 PM, "Roger Greenaway" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi outres,

I think I have been a little inconsistent in this thread.
On the one hand it seems negative (and even irresponsible) to criticise without offering an alternative. But on the other hand it seems a bit arrogant (and possibly missing the point) to try making a model or new arrangement of existing models. I confess to being more comfortable in critical mode than I am in creative mode (especially if there is a reasonable chance that searching the literature will reveal that someone has been there before and that a good alternative already exists). And while confessing, I should add that when a question arouses such interest on outres, this process becomes a lazy (but very stimulating) way of 'searching the literature'.

So it was a delight to discover Jason's 'Experience, Reflect, Critique: The End of the „Learning Cycles‰ Era'. Thank you Jayson. And here I can quote. Jayson writes: "the pattern of „experience-reflect-learn‰ might be considered an ideology of experiential learning rather than a philosophy or a theory of experiential learning. In its time, this framework served a useful purpose. However, given changes in knowledge, research methods, participant populations, societal trends, and educational goals, it might now be influencing research and practice in unhelpful ways." Jayson tackles the issue from many perspectives. I would add.
Robyn draws our attention to the 'bits in between':  [when] 'talking to students about what they think will stay with them from their experiences it often seems to be  the bits in between'. This is very similar to what I found in my research with managers taking part in outdoor programmes. But it is not clear to me whether this provides an opportunity to step away from models and theories because they cannot (or do not yet) capture what really matters - or whether further enquiry into the 'bits in between' is itself a process of model-making?

Roger

Roger Greenaway
Reviewing Skills Training
< http://reviewing.co.uk <http://reviewing.co.uk/> >


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John Quay
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