The dearth of “learning by doing” in school is frustrating because we know there is more to learning than the abstracted, stimulus-response type activities that predominate. One of the problems with this approach to teaching is that students disengage from the process as they see it as meaningless and arbitrary. Learning by experience, in contrast, is characterised by personal involvement with, and confrontation of, practical, social, personal or research problems. Learning by experience means that students participate in the learning process, have input into the direction and where “self-evaluation is the principal method of assessing progress or success”. The question is how do we make this happen within the confines of what we are mandated to teach?
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