The purpose of this paper is to compare two radically different approaches of experiential learning, enabling four usually missing dimensions in experiential learning to be revealed.
The data in this paper are drawn from a five‐year action research involving more than 70 students and another action research run in kindergartens for more than ten years.
To reveal the power of experiential learning – the authors name it complex experiential learning – one needs to be compliant with four principles: the conditions for the experience to emerge comes from the participants themselves; the multiplicity principle; the dual epistemological authenticity principle; and the complexity principle.
It would be valuable to gather longitudinal data to explore how the perspective of participants on the impact of these four principles varies over time.
Any experiential workshop, run under the rules of the four discovered principles, reveals a higher learning outcome.
Limited research on experiential learning research properly addresses the question of how which type of experience will be the most likely to produce expected learning effects.
