What Is Experiential Education?

Experiential education is a new form of training and education. It originated from Kurt Hahn's Outward Bound School. Through field training, participants were allowed to improve their survival and interpersonal abilities, and improve their personality and psychological qualities. Since the 1990s, experiential education in developed countries has developed rapidly. In particular, experiential training has shown outstanding advantages in improving the quality of employees, and various experiential training institutions and companies have developed rapidly. Experiential education has also been promoted in primary, middle and primary schools. ^[1]

Experiential education

The "body" of "experience" means to be in the place and experience; "Experience" means to observe feelings and verify. Experience is procedural, personal, and non-teachable, and is a process full of personality and creativity. From a psychological perspective, experience is "sense intuition" and a special activity based on the "internal perception" of the individual. It is always closely linked to the individual's self-awareness. Therefore, from the perspective of etymology, in the process of growth, a person also needs to personally experience and personally verify in order to obtain scientific knowledge, develop moral qualities, and master skills.

Adhere to the combination of "indirect experience-direct experience-reflective experience-experience internalization" and other experience methods.

"Indirect experience" is also called character experience. Using simulated society and life, design multiple roles for minors, simulate scenarios of farms, factories, shops, institutions, and corresponding positions, so that minors can experience indirectly.

"Direct experience" is to allow minors to overcome unexpected difficulties in the past to complete relevant "missions" and get rid of the usual pride and pride. Organize minors to experience production and life at farms, factories, shops, and institutions, and gain perception and perception through personal participation.

"Reflective experience" is to guide the experiencer to think deeply about the psychological feeling, emotional experience, behavior change, activity process and effect in the experience, strengthen the experience effect, and promote self-awareness and evaluation.

"Experience internalization" is the deepening and improvement of experience reflection, emphasizing the need to clarify the relationship between the external behavior and internal processes of experience activities, and to promote and deepen the internal experience through external activities. The experience can make students widely contact the society, taste the hardships of labor, experience the warmth on earth, and enhance the sense of social responsibility.

(1) The principle of subjectivity. Students are the subject of education, but also the subject of development and experience. The formation of students' moral character and social development is achieved through interaction between themselves and the outside world in various activities. For this reason, the teacher should change from a simple knowledge imparter to a guide and organizer of student learning activities. It is necessary to respect the subject status of students, mobilize students' internal motivation, and internalize moral education into the needs of physical and mental development. The atmosphere created by teachers is for students to experience, and students just happen to learn moral knowledge and form moral behavior.

(2) Activity principle. The goal of the moral education curriculum is mainly achieved through various teaching activities guided by teachers. Activities are intermediaries for teaching and learning. In experiential teaching, students should be directly involved in thematic activities, game activities, and other practical activities. This is an important way for students to improve moral knowledge and form moral behavior. Students gain a lot of knowledge and experience through long-term continuous participation in activities. Teachers should integrate the process, methods, skills, and knowledge of the activity according to the teaching content, and incorporate moral education into the activity, purposefully create appropriate situations for students, and guide students to actively participate in school, family, and community activities. Experience in activities, improve ethics in experience.

(3) The principle of inquiry. Guiding students to explore is an effective form of practical experience theory. "Experiential teaching" emphasizes students' inquiry activities and promotes inquiry learning. Let students in the curriculum field or real life scenarios, through teacher guidance, group cooperation, personal research and other organizational forms, cultivate students' ability to find and ask questions, collect and process information, analyze and solve problems, communication and Ability to cooperate. In the process of gaining inner experience, students can gradually improve their cognition, participation, adaptation, and innovation.

(4) The principle of living. The book "Learning to Survive" states: "Schools cannot be disconnected from life." Curriculum should be transformed from the situation of children's lives and become a curriculum oriented to children's lives. Both curriculum goals and content should return to children's lives. This is the principle that "experiential education" should emphasize. The new curriculum should move from the past idealized, politicized, and modeled framework to livelihood, so that children and children can have a deep understanding of society and self in life, and learn to recognize beauty and ugliness, good and evil, true and evil from personal experience Leave, and learn to be a person in life interaction. Boldly allow students to face complicated social life and multiple moral values, do not avoid the contradictions encountered by students in real life, and let students flexibly use knowledge in changing social life to make correct and accurate analysis and comparison. Reasonable choice. Persist in the integration of experience, such as "physical-psychological-emotional-individual experience".

Experiential education

Experiential education includes four stages:

(1) Personal experience. That is, the stage where an individual experiences something or a situation in person.

(2) into the stage. That is, the stage in which an individual abstracts and summarizes the above-mentioned personal experience process to form a concept or idea.

(3) Inspection stage. That is, the stage in which an individual tests a formed concept or idea in a new situation.

(4) The reflection stage. That is to reflect on the concepts or concepts that have been formed, to generate new experiences and new cognitions, and to continuously generate cycles.

It can be seen that experiential teaching is a teaching method that promotes students to continuously generate new experiences and new understandings, and develops students' ability to adapt to nature and society, forms a positive attitude to life, and promotes personal growth. For example, the implementation of experiential teaching in moral education class is to allow students to experience something (including psychological experience and participating in practical activities or "acting in person"), to get real feelings from it, in order to enhance moral awareness and stimulate the corresponding Moral emotions.

Experiential Education Experience

Adhere to the integration of educational resources such as "school-base-family-community". While integrating the educational resources of schools, bases, families, and communities, we will focus on the construction of experiential education bases and patriotic education bases. The purpose of building a base is to allow minors to learn to survive, to communicate, and to be humans through experience. The base is a condensed society. When teenagers walk into the base, they can experience society and experience life. For example, the Junior Military School can allow primary and middle school students to experience military camp life; the Junior Police School can allow students to experience the armed police's capture and fighting and the police officer's sentry life; the parent school can allow different types of families to carry out parent-child activities here, and let children experience when Parents' hardships; mock courts can allow children to experience the majesty of judges, the eloquence of lawyers, and the embarrassment of criminals. The base not only has "words", but also "intelligence", so that minors can truly become "little adults" in experiencing the sweetness and bitterness of adults, learn to take care of themselves and discipline, and realize the true meaning of life. Through the construction of an experience base, a platform for young people to demonstrate their talents is provided so that they can experience the importance of collective life and cooperation, acquire knowledge, train their skills, and increase their experience.