Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development,. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc.

"In the overeager embrace of the rational, scientific, and technological, our concept of the learning process itself was distorted first by rationalism and later by behaviorism. We lost touch with our own experience as the source of personal learning and development and, in the process, lost that experiential centeredness necessary to counterbalance the loss of "scientific" centeredness that has been progressively slipping away since Copernicus " p. 2

Kurt Lewin said "There is nothing so practical as a good theory" p. 4

Lewin found that "learning is best facilitated in an environment where there is dialectic tension and conflict between immediate, concrete experience and analytic detachment." p. 10

Dewey had a philosophical perspective of pragmatism, and Kurt Lewin the pheonomenological perspective of Gestalt psychology. p. 12 Piaget's focus was on cognitive-devopment processes. Piaget's theory describes how intelligence is shaped by experience. "Intelligence is not an innate internal characteristic of the individual but arises as a product of the interaction between the person and his or her environment". It is a dialectic between assimilating experience into concepts and accommodating concepts to experience...

Experiential learning is different from rationalist or cognitive theories of learning that tend to give primary emphasis to acquisition, manipulation, and recall of abstract symbols, and from behavioral learning theories that deny any role for consciousness and subjective experience in the learning process. p. 20 Experiential learning is a holistic integrative perspective that combines experience, perception, cognition, and behavior.

Lewinian Experiential Learning Process (Feedback Process)

* Concrete experience

* Observations and reflections

* Formation of abstract concepts and generalizations

* Testing implications of concepts in new situations

Much individual and organizational ineffectiveness could be traced to a lack of adequate feedback processes. There is an imbalance of observation and action (too much of either).

Dewey's Model of Experiential Learning

* Impulse

* Observation

* Knowledge

* Judgement

(complex circular overlapping process leading to purpose). It is a dialectic process of experience, concepts, observations, and action. p. 22

Piaget's Model of Learning and Cognitive Development

* concrete phenomenalism - abstract constructionism

* internalized reflection - active egocentrism

For Piaget learning is the accomodation of concepts or schemas to experience in the world and the process of assimilation of events and experiences into concepts or schemas. When accomodation dominate assimilation, we have imitation, when assimilation dominates accomodation we have play.

Four Stages of Learning

1. Sensory-motor stage (feeling, touching, handling) 0-2 years. Development of goal-oriented behavior. Learning occurs through stimulus and response.

2. 2-6 years Representational Stage - Learning is now ikonic. The child is free to play with images of the real world. The child is a creature of the moment. Learning is divergent.

3. 7-11 years Stage of Concrete Operations. Learning governed by logic of classes and relations. They develop inductive powers.

4. 12-15 years Stage of Formal Operations . Now develop possible implications of theories and test which are true. Learning is convergent. Problem-solving oriented, organizing data, control of variables, logical justification and proof.