Developing a spirit of inquiry among students is one of the many things that are needed to achieve...

Experiential Learning to Inspire the Spirit of Inquiry
By Leena Kapoor

Developing a spirit of inquiry among students is one of the many things that are needed to achieve the objectives of education. One of the essential conditions needed to inspire the spirit of inquiry, is to share power with the students. The traditional methods that are used in schools and taught in teacher training institutions do not consider this condition a very valuable one.

Traditional and most often used methods - in spite of the efforts to have a child centred curriculum - have the teacher as the centre, the source of power and knowledge, who determines what is to be learnt, how it will be learnt, how it will be tested etc.

In such a context efforts at sharing of power engenders fear of indiscipline, fear of being sidetracked and fear of not being able to complete the syllabus.

Sharing of power will mean, creating opportunities for students to use their existing faculties and experiences to interpret information, present their interpretation, check it against feedback and conclude their learning for themselves under the guidance of the teacher.

A couple of methods that share power and put students in charge of their own learning are:

• Co-operative Learning • Group work based on the consensus beliefs and process

Using these methods will mean investing time in teacher preparation and giving students time to learn methods that will help them take initiative for their own learning. However, once teachers and students have practiced facilitative, social learning, and independent learning behaviours, the pace of teaching-learning increases.

These methods have been used in courses for teachers and students in the areas of leadership, personal effectiveness, teaching effectiveness and management techniques. These courses are based on the belief of empowering learners to take charge of their own learning. It is also possible to use these methods across the board with scholastic as well as non-scholastic subjects.

The effects of using these methods are that there is meaningful dialogue among students, ownership of what is learnt and recall of what is learnt. Invariably there is joy in the learning process and eagerness to continue to learn. Students loose consciousness of passing time and there is visible disappointment at having to stop the process.

Students also feel a lot more in control of their learning and the responses to questions is widespread among students in the classroom. There is also amazement among students at the willingness to participate and resourcefulness of otherwise reticent classmates.

Leena Kapoor of http://www.experiential-learning-games.com Experiential learning has been explored in great detail on her site with more than 45 pages of content. She also offers a free e-book on creative techniques at http://www.experiential-learning-games.com/newtraininggames.html

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