To Empower Through Experience
By: Daniel John Carter
Tags: Professional Development, Youth, Experience, Reflections, Education

To understand the application of the principles, the principles themselves must first be understood. Looking at the first chosen principle:

“The learner must be motivated to learn — motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic”

We must understand that this suggests the learner must be motivated, however, this motivation can come from inside themselves or from external factors. Motivation, however, is the reasoning that drives a person to learn. It was Maslow with his hierarchy of needs that saw ‘self-actualization’ as what drives people to learn. The need to make full use of one’s talents, become creative and achieve one’s potential is what motivates us. In an activity such as the stated training course, there is an intrinsic motivation already displayed by the participant’s application to attend the course. One of the most important things for the educator to understand is what type of motivation this is and if it is beneficial to the participants learning on the course. On a non-formal education-based training the aim is to develop the inner motivation of students by allowing them to study subjects that interest them and participate in activities in which they have strengths. Such examples include youth exchanges, construction, acting, communications, etc.

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

The agenda of the training which was developed in such a way as to encourage the motivation of all participants through are varied agenda of interactive methods of learning that encompass all learning styles. The agenda shows a variety of activities ranging from outdoor education, board games, living libraries, self-assessment, and reflection to practical implementation of what they have learned. One of the main issues that affected motivation at the time was the sheer levels of reflection contained within the training itself. Due to the nature of the subject participants could be engaged in some form of reflection up to five times a day. This style of learning does not suit every learner so in an effort to combat this, the activities were designed to be as interactive and in as many different places as possible. Fortunately, the weather allowed good use of the nearby church-owned park bringing fresh air and sunshine into people’s day which some people consider essential for motivation.

“In some cases, teachers and outdoor educators identified improvements in students’ behaviour, particularly among older students” — Justin Dillon.

The perception of ownership was also used, during the training the participants took what they learned and had the opportunity to develop their own workshop that encompassed the Experiential Learning Cycle and deliver it to their fellow participants. The responsibility and ownership of the task did induce intrinsic motivation among some participants, this, in turn, worked to improve their skills and capabilities. However, this method did not work for all the participants and some participants displayed damaging extrinsic motivation based around competition which also damaged their workshops and personal learning. The trainers observed that those teams who displayed attributes of intrinsic motivation generally performed a better workshop than those who displayed extrinsic ones. The participants are not going to be motivated to take part in every part of the training so as a method to motivate them to take part in everything the participants were informed by the organisation that they will not receive their travel reimbursement unless they attend at least 90% of the programme. However, it is hard to judge how well this will work, it has been suggested that extrinsic constraints can increase someone’s intrinsic interest in doing that.

“When children were given mild threats against playing with an attractive toy, it was found that the threat actually served to increase the child’s interest in the toy” — Timothy D Wilson

Also, as this is an international training it was highly likely some people had the extrinsic motivation of attending solely for the aspect of travelling to Serbia for free / cheaply to see the country. Although this is not the point of the training, free time was made to keep these people interested and participating. Much of what we do as informal educators is concerned with creating an environment where ‘acquisition learning can take place. The surrounding environment has an impact on the learner’s motivation, creating this environment of acquisition learning allows the participants to attribute their educational factors to autonomy, which stimulates intrinsic motivation. In fact, environment can be one of the most important factors upon motivation. This was a residential training clean comfortable accommodation with internet, clean modern bathrooms and decent wholesome food, motivation levels improved significantly. The training room itself also needed to be managed appropriately such as making sure the room was warm, but also ventilated and the lighting was adequate to avoid drops in motivation levels.

“We may also create events or change environments e.g., altering the layout of a room to simulate surprise and exploration” — Tony Jeffs

The second chosen principle is ‘The subject matter to be learned should be carefully analysed and broken down into a logical sequence’. A good way to understand logical sequence is to think about the process of learning origami. Imagine a learner is making a crane out of paper for the first time; they have a set of instructions and a clear objective. However, they do not read all of the instructions and then proceed to make the crane. The instructions are in steps to be followed one after each other. Each step, in this case, is a fold, a broken down part in a logical sequence towards understanding all the subject matter and achieving the learning objective. Logic can be defined as the science of reasoning and therefore each step can be considered a sequence of reasoning that eventually leads to understanding the reason itself.

The programme was broken down into seven sections of logical sequence:



— Getting to know each other.

— Learning Progress.

— Mapping my learning.

— Sharpening Skills.

— Work in progress.

— To-do list & evaluation.

— Saying goodbye.

These seven stages were presented in a graphic design style timeline. A more formal version of the agenda was also provided to the participants. Whereas this one was placed upon the training wall to give participants a more creative overview of the programme.

The first stage of getting to know each other involved introductions via non-formal icebreakers with such games as ‘two truths and a lie’ as well as the ‘geographical map’. This section moved on to group building activities which involved a large number of outdoor activities such as hunting for condoms in the park with a map that one of the trainers created. This was to develop a strong bond between the group and trusting relationships so they can engage in dialogue about personal learning in the future stages. The next stage of the programme was about learning, different learning styles, learning in different environments and reflecting on that learning. The Experiential Learning Cycle was introduced and this section focused on the ‘Experience’ and ‘Reflection’ phase of the cycle. This was achieved through the implementation of different ‘experiences’ such as being put in a room with a lot of board games and being asked to learn as many as possible in a set time to blind leadership in the woods. This was followed by different methods of reflection upon the experience such as individual, group, informal and formal.

We discussed the nature of reflection:

- Returning to experience.

- Attending to and/or connecting with feelings.

- Evaluating experience.

The section finished with developing knowledge of the difference between reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action.

“The former can be thought of as ‘thinking on our feet’…Reflection-on-action is something that happens after the event” — Tony Jeffs.

This led the group on to the next stage of the Experiential Learning Cycle as well as the next stage of the programme.

The ‘Mapping my learning’ section was about conceptualising the experience and reflection, then making it into an evaluation to learn from as well as implement in future. This involved developing debriefing skills that can be used with young people to develop on the reflection and help young people fully understand the experience. Then from this conceptualisation with young people turn it not only into and understanding of the experience but an understanding of their learning.

“As informal educators, we are seeking to identify and problematize the experience of others; to teach by example and to reflect back those experiences for scrutiny through conversation” — Tony Jeffs

Sharpening Skills was all about developing competencies as youth workers to provide excellent learning experiences that can be built upon for reflective development, conceptualisation and evaluation. This involved experiencing many different methods of learning experience and developing a personal understanding of one’s own learning styles as well as one’s best reflection methods. This section finished with the development of a model and check for the best practice implementation of an Experiential Learning Cycle based workshop.

The work in progress section was the participants working together to develop their own workshops based on the Experiential Learning Cycle in teams and they implement these workshops on their fellow participants. This was followed by a three-part feedback session which involved self-given feedback, feedback from the participants and feedback from the trainers.

The penultimate section was about networking with the other participants about possible future projects. As well as creating a ‘to do’ list for developing one’s own approach to their youth work back in their home communities. The participants were given time to plan for future work using what they had learnt on the training with each on future youth exchanges, trainings, etc. Then this stage finished with a personal self-evaluation of skills as well as an evaluation of the training itself.

The final stage was an evening watching videos and slideshows of pictures taken throughout the programme to remind the participants of the experience they have just gone through together. Finally, the programme ended with a farewell meal and a saying goodbye party.

The third chosen principle is ‘the learner must practice what she/he has learned’. As obvious as the statement may seem to some, it is a principle not always put into action or understood by learners themselves. Cardiff University itself states within its learning guide that “presentation skills can be learnt and continually improved through practice”. As has been seen throughout human history there are some learning objectives that practice is essential to achieve them, e.g. Archery, Flying, Fishing, etc. However it is not always so obvious in other areas; imagine a person who has French lessons, but they only read the texts books and they hear the words unless they practice speaking it is unlikely they could go to France and engage in conversation. Learning by doing is a fairly well-known and obvious notion; however, it has been left out of the academic classroom in the past, which is detrimental to kinaesthetic learners.

“Many teachers know that the active, kinaesthetic learner needs hands-on experiences. A deeper understanding of these learners tells us that the experiences should come early in the process while the initial understanding of the concepts and skills are being developed, not just during practice time” — P.B. Guild

It must also be noted however that learning by doing is not the only reason that the learner must practice what they learnt. If a person does fifty driving lessons, they are not given a license as they must first practice what they have learnt in order to prove they have learnt it. Through their lessons, they will have been practising over and over what they learnt, in order to learn more and improve their ability, learning through doing. To acquire the license however they must practice what they have learnt as a form of assessment or evaluation of their learning. At the end of the day, a valid assessment method is one which assesses whether the objectives of the learning experience are achieved.

The group’s practice of what they have learnt occurred in several stages:

— Practicing working as a team.

— Practicing reflection.

— Practicing Experiential Learning Cycle workshops.

As previously stated after the group had their introductions the group engaged in team building activities so that through doing, they could form their group dynamics and learn how to work together. This was done so the group could gel together to reduce or even eliminate inequalities, thus work together as an equal team when covering the future challenges of running workshops together, learning to learn together and engaging in group reflection. The group demonstrated this well; one example is how the blind participate was always involved in every activity (trainer or participant-led). That participant was always supported by one member of the group at all times with no trainer or facilitator initiation.

The group was consistently engaged in reflective activities and took part in learning many different forms of reflection. The group regularly though the training got to practice individual reflection, group reflection and initiating reflection through leading debriefings with other participants. This happened not only within their workshops but also throughout different learning to learn activities and developing facilitator competences.

The major point in the programme where the participants got to practice what they had learnt was within the final major learning aspect of the program. This was where the participants separated into teams of two or three people and ran workshops based on the Experiential Learning Cycle for the other participants. They had time to work together and discuss what they had learnt and then come up with ideas as well as prepare a 50-minute workshop for the other participants. The workshop was to include:

- An introduction with aims and objectives.

- An experience.

- A debriefing that included reflection and conceptualisation.

- An evaluation.

All teams performed the workshops; some with excellent results that all enjoyed and felt like they had experienced the full cycle in an enjoyable as well as understandable way. So groups became too focused on the experience and lost time. Whereas other groups became too focused on the reflection and provided a poor experience to learn from. However, it has to be remembered that the whole event of preparing and running the workshops (whether they were excellent or not) is a massive experience which was reflected upon while also evaluated within the self-assessment, including the final sections of the programme. The fact is that learning isn’t simply a memory that we label as knowledge, learning is the way we search for understanding.

Through the description of the training course, it has been shown that learners must be motivated to learn, and motivation is better when intrinsic; however extrinsic motivation can be put to useful effect. This is because intrinsic motivation is successful if learners develop their own learning strategies, whereas extrinsic motivation is successful when it reflects students’ interests.

Achievement of objectives is more successful when the subject matter to be learned is carefully analysed and broken down into a logical sequence. This makes it easier for the student to digest and process giving success to intrinsic motivation as students can then self-regulate their own motivation.

In line with a logical sequence, the training helped to confirm that the learner must practice what they have learned. This was noted in the final self-assessments where a significant number of participants stated that only after trying to run an Experiential Learning Cycle style workshop that they truly started to understand the process.



“As informal educators, we are seeking to ‘lead people out’ towards understanding and discernment. As such we create and exploit opportunities for others, and ourselves, to learn. In other words, we intervene to teach” — Mark Smith