Why Is It So Important For Our Students To Start Engaging in Experiential Learning Experiences (ExL) Today, Rather Than Waiting For Tomorrow?
It is imperative we create experiential learning experiences immediately for the following reasons:
1. The current educational system was designed in the 19th Century and no longer supports our students, who we are educating in the 21st Century.
- Please view Sir Kenneth Robinson's video below. Robinson states that "Kids don't see a purpose in going to school...they believe a college degree no longer guarantees that you will have a job." He maintains that "Our current educational system was designed, conceived, and structured from a different age...it was conceived in the intellectual culture of enlightenment and it was designed in the economic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution" (2010). It simply is not meeting the needs of the majority of our students and must be changed.
2. "When our children leave high school today, they slam into the worst under-30 employment prospects since the Great Depression" (Lash and Belfiore 1).
- According to Dave Lash and Grace Belfiore for Next Generation Learning Challenges, "The under-30 employment crisis is a global phenomenon...According to The Economist, youth comprise only 17% of the world's population, but 40% of the world's unemployed" (Report 1 - 5).
- They also maintain that "College is no longer a safe harbor" (Report 1 - 5).
- In addition they assert that there has been a "...contraction of middle-skills jobs, which economists call "labor polarization," due to a shift in technological change (Report 1 - 7).
- Lash and Belfiore also report that there are 5 roadblocks to a career for young people. They are due to:
- A chronically weak labor market
- The accelerating pace of automation
- The hard shift to an on-demand workforce
- A bias for hiring experience over potential
- The job-hunting labyrinth (Report 2 - 1).
3. Experiential Learning Supports Vermont's Legislative Act 77, which was enacted in 2013.
- Act 77 is an "An act relating to encouraging flexible pathways to secondary school completion" (State of Vermont: Vermont General Assembly 2013).
- (9) “ 'Flexible pathways to graduation' means any combination of high-quality academic and experiential components leading to secondary school completion and post-secondary readiness, which may include assessments that allow the student to apply his or her knowledge and skills to tasks that are of interest to that student" (State of Vermont: Vermont General Assembly 2013).
4. Brain research provides evidence that when students engage in learning projects they are interested in and are personally meaningful, they will react emotionally. An emotional response creates deep learning experience for students, as such an event physically changes the structure of the brain.
- John Dewey believed that when we learn deeply we are “struck” (Kolb and Kolb 9) by that experience. When we actively gain new knowledge from a meaningful experience this will have an affect on our emotions, which will physically change our brain. Therefore, if we cannot experience things, for example, as we sit and listen to a lecture, we are not physically changing our brain structure, and thus not engaging in deep learning.
Works Cited:
Lash, Dave and Grace Belfiore. "Opportunity, Work, and the Wayfinding Decade Report 1 of the My Ways Student Success Series: What Learners Need to Thrive in a World of Change." Educause: Next Generation Learning Challenges, 2017.
Lash, Dave and Grace Belfiore. "5 Roadblocks to Bootstrapping a Career Report 2 of the My Ways Student Success Series: What Learners Need to Thrive in a World of Change." Educause: Next Generation Learning Challenges, 2017.
Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen. “Ed-Talk: Learning with an Emotional Brain.” YouTube, uploaded by American Educational Research Association, 31 August 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEeo350WQrs&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 2 October 2019.
No. 77. "An act relating to encouraging flexible pathways to secondary school completion." State of Vermont: Vermont General Assembly, 2013, http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2014/Acts/ACT077.pdf. Accessed 2 October 2019.
Robinson, Sir Kenneth. "RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms." YouTube, uploaded by The RSA, 14 October 2010,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=zDZFcDGpL4U. Accessed 2 October 2019.
Lash, Dave and Grace Belfiore. "5 Roadblocks to Bootstrapping a Career Report 2 of the My Ways Student Success Series: What Learners Need to Thrive in a World of Change." Educause: Next Generation Learning Challenges, 2017.
Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen. “Ed-Talk: Learning with an Emotional Brain.” YouTube, uploaded by American Educational Research Association, 31 August 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEeo350WQrs&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 2 October 2019.
No. 77. "An act relating to encouraging flexible pathways to secondary school completion." State of Vermont: Vermont General Assembly, 2013, http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2014/Acts/ACT077.pdf. Accessed 2 October 2019.
Robinson, Sir Kenneth. "RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms." YouTube, uploaded by The RSA, 14 October 2010,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=zDZFcDGpL4U. Accessed 2 October 2019.