The Shepard as Instructor: Engaging Students in the Experiential Education Process

Enthusiastic supporters of experiential education might say that learners are so naturally driven by a captivating experience that it just cannot help but create concrete learning. Yet, is creating a dramatic unknown enough to engage tentative participants? I suggest that the educator must do more than create an activity and hope that learners will embrace it with enthusiasm. A major role of the instructor in the experiential education process is to provide a safe space for learning to occur and encourage learners to recognize the opportunities for growth available. The educator as shepard is a useful metaphor in describing how to engage learners through experiential learning. This idea is based on the notion that the class collectively holds all the information, experience or knowledge necessary for learning to occur. The role of the shepard instructor is similar to the traditional shepard, whose job is to guide and to guard their flock. She/he assists in the development of new ideas by: 1) drawing from the resources of the group of learners (guiding), and 2) securing the safety of the learning environment (guarding). When acting as a shepard, the instructor creates a safe learning atmosphere, both physically and psychologically, where learners are not afraid to take risks. A student in an educationally safe space more fully bonds with the group, maintains selfesteem and embraces all learning potentials. As Rogers (1969) points out, learning that is perceived as threatening is more easily assimilated when the environment is safe. The traditional shepard guides his/ her flock along various journeys, stepping aside when the animal's ability to achieve its needs naturally occurs. The shepard instructor steps aside when the learner is engaged in the learning process, yet continues to guard the learning environment to allow a blossoming of the learner's curiosity and quest for knowledge. In a sense, the instructor alters between guiding the learner to solve the barriers to learning they often encounter and guarding the intensity and safety of their engagement. As John Amos Comenius (1649) states, "the proper education of the young does not consist in stuffing their heads with a mass of words, sentences, and ideas dragged together out of various authors, but in opening up their understanding to the outer world, so that a living stream may flow from their own minds, just as leaves, flowers, and fruit spring from the bud on a tree. " The traditional shepard is someone who guides and tends to a herd. Accordingly, the shepard instructor is with the learner in their learning cycle - guiding and nurturing the experience from any role necessary at the time. According to Warren (1995) the following eight responsibilities are essential for agricultural instructors hoping to utilize methods of a herdsman instructor in experiential education settings. 1. Organize Logistics - It is the job of the shepard instructor to handle logistics, to allow learners full attention to the lessons possible in the situation. Shoddy logistical management often gives rise to focus on minutiae rather than substantive experiential learning. 2. Guard the Initial Learning Environment - The creation of safe space in teaching geared to using experiences cannot be underestimated. Both physical and emotional safety is imperative; they also don't just happen and are often overlooked, due to what I call the oppression of experience. Often in their belief in the value of the activity and the subsequent follow-up; instructors bypass the initial psychological safety building, in an effort to get to the heart of the experience. Such instructors have learners out swinging in the treetops before they are even comfortable in a group of their own peers. 3. Serve as Nurturer - Learners come to classes with years of intense schooling which was far from experiential. They are bursting with hopes of an educational magic potion, yet are caught by reutilized constructs of learning. …