Johan Hovelynck

Beyond Didactics: A reconnaissance of experiential learning

This article examines the role that adventure educators attribute to experience in learning, and as such addresses the question to what extent their practice can be understood as experiential education. It will be argued that the main constraint to experiential learning in so-called experiential education is the didactic mindset in which it is captured. A variety of activities has enlivened the teaching and to some extent remedied its focus on students, intellectual understanding, but the concept of education as a matter of teachers conveying a message has largely remained unchanged. The article proposes that there is a fundamental difference between active forms of teaching and experiential education, and documents that adventure education is increasingly adopting the didactic teaching methods that it set out to be an alternative for.

Facilitating the Development of Generative Metaphors: Re-Emphasizing Participants' Guiding Images

This article presents experiential learning as a process of metaphor change. It explores the development of generative metaphors as it occurs in outdoor programs as well as elsewhere, and discusses some implications for the facilitation of experiential learning in adventure education. I will suggest that the related literature has overemphasized facilitators’ metaphoric introductions to adventure activities at the expense of interventions at the moment learners’ metaphors manifest themselves during the experience. After an introduction to cycles of metaphor development, this paper focuses on facilitating the initial stages of such cycles. It examines connections with several theoretical frameworks underpinning this approach and with the prevailing perspective on metaphors in adventure programming.

Recognising and exploring action-theories: A reflection-in-action approach to facilitating experiential learning

Abstract Outdoor education has typically presented itself as a specific approach to experiential learning. This article proposes that experiential learning can be understood as a process in which learners recognise and develop their action-theory and that the aim of outdoor development programs — whether in mainstream education, corporate training or therapy — is to facilitate this process. After introducing the notion of action-theory, I will present a particular approach to facilitation, which can be understood as a reflection-in-action approach. I conclude by situating this approach in the wider range of facilitation models in the literature on outdoor education and adventure therapy.