of Kolb's experiential learning cycle model?

1 A solution to the ‘contradiction’ of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle model? The renewed importance of informal lifelong learning in (all) 21st Century education -

Cameron Richards [email protected]

Abstract: Many educators interested in either the concept or practice of ‘experiential learning’ often end up a bit confused by David Kolb’s famous models of this. This is because of how, despite it being typically viewed as a cycle of four stages as well as main learning types, these stages can be initiated and used either as a concrete experience to abstract conceptualization (i.e. practice to theory) trajectory or vice versa. As the paper will discuss, effective experiential learning actually involves the distinct feedback loops of two convergent and interdependent as well as complementary cycles. Recognising this distinction is a strong foundation for better ‘harnessing’ the power of experiential learning in any and all modes of education from both a teaching and learning perspective. The paper will discuss and develop this idea in relation to this idea – one usefully supported by such models as Agyris and Schon’s ultimately related distinction between single loop and double loop learning modes. On this basis the power of experiential learning might be further harnessed in terms of the different modes as well as stages of ‘education’ from preschool through to school and university, and beyond to continuing/adult education and other domains of lifelong learning (e.g. the ‘university of the third age’). Exemplifying the model, the paper will discuss both practical uses as well as conceptual interpretations of a revised version of Kolb’s ‘learning cycle’ model of experiential learning in education and also in life. Keywords: experiential learning; Kolb learning cycle; informal lifelong learning; lifelong education; 21st Century education Introduction: Reinforcing or resolving modern education’s ‘disconnection’ from experience? “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” - David Kolb, 1984, p. 38 The growing importance of the general concept and related national policies of lifelong learning (and/or lifelong education) also reflect dramatic changes to education both globally and locally in the 21 st Century. This is exemplified by recent moves by Japan and Korea (following on similar but less developed projections about lifelong learning by the European Union) to include school and higher education in a larger lifelong education framework. Global confusions about the distinction between lifelong education and learning perhaps illustrate some larger dilemmas and contradictions. This paper will consider the changing nature of 21st Century education in relation to two linked aims here which often get mixed up. One is to consider the renewed importance of informal lifelong learning based on direct as well as indirect human experience – a basic tenet of the experiential learning philosophy of John Dewey and many others but especially including here the well-known Kolb models. The second (a basis for the other) is to outline a related larger policy as well as practical context for making a clear and definitively consistent distinction between lifelong education and lifelong learning. Since emerging as more significantly a policy than practical concept in recent decades in light of the challenge of ageing societies and linked aspirations of knowledge economy or society (Robertson, 2005; Ogawa, 2009; Panitside, 2014), lifelong learning has become a relatively common-place term in many countries around the world with both top-down and bottom-up imperatives of use (e.g. Jarvis, 2009). The policy adaptation of the term for a view of learning throughout life or as a lifelong process was initially conceived in European Union education policies through the EU’s Bologna Declaration of 1999 (European Union Commission, 2001). Just a year later it had become a key focus of the 2000 Lisbon strategy – an

SCU Scholarship of Teaching Symposium – 12 October 2016

2 action and development economic plan for the EU to become an advanced knowledge economy which in 2007 framed the assumptions and goals of the EU’s lifelong learning programme (Borg & Mayo, 2005; Zarifis & Gravani, 2014). Conversely, there has been a bottom-up adaptation of the term as around the world the unemployed, new graduates, and those trying to retain existing work or careers have realized that continuing education, professional development and workplace learning are now basic requirements of future employability (Wilson, 2009; Fejes, 2014). This is in the context of how the notion of stable trajectories of employment and career as well as clear-cut retirement options have begun to rapidly change or even disappear alongside the dramatically changing nature of work, technology and society - that is, in terms of the related imperatives of globalization, new technologies taking over many jobs, rising rates of long-term employment, and so on (e.g. Field, Burke & Cooper, 2013). Much of the rhetoric of lifelong learning has remained focused also on the self-directed and even adventurous pursuit of knowledge for personal and self-motivated (as well as professional and work related) reasons (e.g. Taylor, 2012). However, it is noteworthy that related policy developments all took place in terms of how the 1995 GATS agreement also proposed a review of education in terms of marketization and privatization principles (Verger & Robertson, 2012). In this way also, as we have explored in various ways for some time now (e.g. Richards 2004, 2012a, 2012b, 2013a; 2013b; 2015), a new emerging plethora of variations and alternatives to the stable ‘one size fits all’ tendency of modern education have also been in the process of effectively collapsing or at least transforming that model. In this time formal notions of education also as a public good have been disappearing as forces of commercialization and commodification take over or create new schools, colleges and universities, as workplace training and continuing professional development options are corporatized, as public as well as private universities internationalize as part of national policy (also serving as de facto immigration policies for some governments whilst others lament a brain drain), as flexible models of schooling as well as higher education emerge, as the social media options of the internet also include mass online learning options (such as MOOCs), as non-formal options for continuing education proliferate in terms of personal interest as well as professional development options, and as both third and fourth age (e.g. University of Third Age) lifelong learning options for retirees, seniors and also others who no longer work become more commonplace. The need for a more comprehensive but also convergent understanding of the concept lifelong learning has also had cross-cultural variations. In OECD countries where the forces of modernization have been most advanced, the concept has tended to be seen as an extension or add-on of some kind and in several different ways to the late twentieth-century ‘massification’ of formal education (e.g. Calderon, 2012) with the promise that this would ensure employability and a secure or stable life. This is arguably why the concept has been often seen as interchangeable with the related notion and initially preferred term lifelong education (Billett, 2010). On one hand, many therefore naturally understand the term in both academic and also vocational training contexts as somehow a need to up-skill and renew credentials as well as skills and knowledge to ensure employability. On the other hand, in the education field itself many Western teachers have adapted the term in schools and universities in terms of various ‘active learning’ models (self-directed/ learner-centred/ constructivist models of learning, etc.) which address transmission learning, rote learning, and the related exam-based curriculum model of the passive, imitative and ‘non-thinking’ learner (e.g. Mezirow, 2000; Crick, Stringer, & Ren, 2014). Likewise, in the emerging fields of continuing and adult education as well as seniors lifelong learning (e.g. University of Third Age) there are similar perspectives which resist both the credentialist or employability rationales and larger economic imperatives of the related concept of lifelong education (Osborne, Houston & Toman, 2007). In such ways, many educators as distinct from policy-makers have still retained a view of lifelong learning as a personal equivalent to past ideals of education as a public good – for instance, John Dewey’s notion that education grounded in direct and also


3 lifelong experience is the key to any modern society maturing to achieve the promise of functioning democracy (Cf. also Jarvis, 2008). In contrast, as Rogers (2005) has pointed out, in developing countries where non-formal education traditions have been needed to assist with a relative lack of formal education opportunities, lifelong learning is often viewed as some kind of integration of formal, non-formal and also informal or experiential modes of learning. This raises the related point that in more traditional (or ‘less modernized’) societies the different if ultimately related concept of lifelong learning is actually nothing new in a generic sense of the term – rather understood as the process by which most people just struggle to survive as they adjust to change, try to develop themselves, aspire to give their children better opportunities in life, and still hold to the cultural framing of the stages of human lifecycle learning. This is despite how in our experience many young school and college or university learners in every country often fear or resist the term lifelong learning as somehow the unpleasant thought typically verbalized as follows (or in similar ways across different cultural contexts): “does this mean we have to do exams for the rest of our life?”. Around the world, the simultaneous rising costs of education and rising rates of also graduate unemployment epitomize and also amplify local as well as global contexts of social divisions or conflict, economic failure, and political instability. Ecclestone & Hayes (2008) point out how human resiliencebuilding (not ‘victim’ reinforcement) is or should be the main focus of better future lifelong learning models (Cf. also Bernard, 2004). They argue that at the center of an associated global crisis of demoralization within education as well as society (i.e. a ‘wider modern cultural malaise’) (e.g. Hayes, 1998) is an underlying model of self ‘diminished’ by the breakdown in human confidence in the links between experience and knowledge as well as learning: “A diminished human subject finds exposure to uncertainty and adversity, including disappointment, despair and conflict simultaneously threatening to ‘the integrity of the self ’ and inhibiting of it” (p. xi). Such an extra-curricular and potentially lifelong new adaptation of the ‘passive learner’ syndrome in modern formal education requires an antidote. A relevant framework is needed to restore confidence in the essential learning process of converting lifelong as well as direct experience into sustainable knowledge. This is to the extent that learning might be defined as the direct or indirect (including both informal reflection and formally taught content) translation and possible transformation of experience into knowledge, understanding, and regular practice – thus linking the quality of life at the macro level to the quality of experience as a typical response at a micro level. Informal learning + quality learning for life development = informal lifelong learning As indicated, imperatives of ageing societies and cultural demoralization around the world and the global knowledge economy have prompted governments everywhere to increasingly recognize and support a general model of lifelong education where both informal learning modes and non-formal options of education are both generally interpreted with reference to (and as additions to) the modern formal education system. However, from the point of view of every individual lifecycle grounded in the informal learning of experience, learning is a lifelong process involving informal, formal and non-formal modes of learning generally corresponding to unstructured, semi-structured, and structured activities and processes. In other words, human experience goes beyond the behavioral reinforcement of a merely ‘animal’ stimulus response to experience to involve constructive or dialogical cognitive and social processes of learning transformation. This frames learner development not just in infancy and youth but all through life. In this way (and condensing or confusing some of the steps) Kolb along with his initial collaborator Ron Fry (Kolb & Fry, 1975) developed their initial model of experiential learning to depict the optimal process of how active learners are able to transform direct or primary experience (and also the secondary-level ‘experiencing’ of awareness and also reflection in and on experience) into forms of human knowledge. From this different perspective, formal notions of education tend to reinforce what are generally recognized


4 as surface modes of learning compared with the deeper learning processes of progressive experiential, action, reflective practice, and integrated (or transformative) modes of an informal learning cycle grounded in (or embodied by) experience – that is, where cognitive and social aspects of learning are grounded in related processes of understanding, synthesis, and transferable application (e.g. Marton & Saljo, 1997; Biggs & Tan, 2011; Kallio, 2011). As Agyris & Schon (1978) recognized, the single loop learning of groups or organisations corresponds to the surface learning of individuals. This is in contrast to how a rather ‘double loop’ engagement with and change in underlying structures or patterns of meaning also corresponds to the deep and transformative learning capacity of individuals to more effectively achieve understanding, transferable knowledge and adaptive reflective practice. The various and convergent modes of tacit knowledge available to every lifelong learner also interact with different forms of explicit knowledge throughout the various stages of life. As the knowledge management models influenced by Polanyi suggest (e.g. Nonaka & von Krogh, 2009), experience is the only way explicit knowledge of information, skills and other related aspects of ‘content’ might be transformed into tacit knowledge. Conversely however, the tacit knowledge as well as deep learning foundations of lifelong learning remains the ultimate framework for and context of formal as well as informal and non-formal education. The tacit-explicit knowledge connection explains why the key to ‘active learning’ and related models (such as cognitive or social constructivism and the learner-centred paradigm) either directly or indirectly remains human experience. The basic transmission or ‘spoon-feeding’ (exam-based curriculum, etc.) model which has dominated modern education tends to project a view of teachers and trainers transmitting information or skills to predominantly passive and unquestioning students also often acquiring attitudes of indifference and a demoralizing lack of interest or intrinsic motivation for lifelong (and lifecycle) learning (e.g. Gatto, 1992). As indicated from the outset above by references to the work of John Dewey, Kurt Lewin and others as well as David Kolb, related notions of action and activity-based experiential learning models have been cited to encourage deep and not just surface learning. Useful support is also offered by the insights of Malcolm Knowles and others that the ‘andragogic’ rather than conventional pedagogic approach is centrally premised on the idea that as people age they acquire a domain of experience which is a valuable resource for learning – one that typically needs to be harnessed along with the related imperative of intrinsic motivation for effective adult and continuing education to take place (Cf. also Boud et al 1985). In other words, whilst the encouragement and harnessing of ongoing (and non-formal and formal as well as informal) ‘experiential learning’ is the key to optimal learning at every stage of the human lifecycle this is critically so at stages beyond youthful development. In contrast to the top-down teaching model, the primary process of learner experiential learning is complemented by the ‘lifelong teaching’ role to design and frame semi-structured learning activities and ‘environments’. This is epitomized by the generic or basic three pillars of ‘activity-based’ learning (problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning and project-based learning), the use of cognitive tools (e.g. Egan, 1997) and situated learning and cognition as also a process of ‘social learning’ (e.g. Lave & Wenger, 1991). As well as such curriculum design strategies and related approaches to optimally framing effective ‘learning environments’, teaching to encourage more effective and/or deep-level learning links to the present’ here and now’ experience of learning include notions of the teachable moment, critical incidents, and ‘just-in-time’ learning (Simkins & Maier, 2010). Those who thus assert that informal education is a contradiction in terms (in contrast to how formal and non-formal education are socially, externally, and institutionally organized) tend to reinforce the modern


5 view of lifelong learning (or lifelong education as UNESCO called it before the EU switched to lifelong learning as the preferred term for cultural reasons) (Jarvis, 2009). From a lifecycle perspective, however, we can make a distinction between an ad hoc and purposeful learning from experience which is ultimately referenced from within rather than externally by the human capacity for self-organisation and capacity for taking responsibility for personal behavior and development. Or as Alan Davies (2004) puts it so well: Informal learning… [is] all that incidental learning, unstructured, unpurposeful but the most extensive and most important part of all the learning that all of us do everyday of our lives… Somewhere along the learning continuum, we come to purposeful and assisted learning (education in its widest sense). When we control this and individualize it, learn what we want for as long as we want and stop when we want, we are engaging in informal education. In relation to the human lifecycle, Figure 1 represents a model of the interplay of formal, non-formal and even informal education (external perspective) and learning (learner-centred perspective) in terms of how experience and thus both ad hoc and more purposeful modes of experiential learning may be understood as intrinsic to the learner as they traverse in time their potential lifecycle in typical or even universal fashion. This foundational role of informal learning-cum-education thus undergirds the horizontal interplay of both formal and non-formal modes of education and learning. As discussed, this includes the formal tendency of the modern education system and non-formal education imperatives in many more traditional or nonOECD countries. This framework also thus incorporates useful notions in the wider lifelong learning framework. Figure 1. The experiential foundations of all learning

The challenge to solve problems represents the common focus of the basic problem-based learning cycle (identity a central or basic problem, develop a strategic action plan, and implement a solution) which cuts across the informal vs. more structured and reflective interventions in or uses of such models as Kolb’s ‘experiential learning cycle’ (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation) (Richards, 2015). In its wider usage (especially by educators), this cycle is typically viewed as having different starting points and trajectories (mainly from either concrete experience to abstract conceptualization and from active experimentation to reflective observation) – reflecting the move from practice to theory and vice versa. Kolb (1984) was aware of this dilemma or apparent contradiction and his response was to increasingly focus on the four stages in terms of their correspondence to distinct ‘learning styles’ (i.e. his related Learning Style Inventory model). He additionally proposed that different individuals tend to have a single learning style preference from adolescence through to mid-career and later life with an integrated perspective being more applicable before and after this life trajectory. In this way Kolb did come to recognize two distinct lines of axis (continuums) which he held to be both open to conflicting choices. The north-south axis he called the perception continuum – involving the function of


6 ‘transforming experience’ via either ‘feeling’ or ‘thinking’. Conversely, the so-called east-west axis he called the processing continuum – involving the function of ‘approaching a task’ in terms of grasping experience via either ‘doing’ or ‘watching’. It is in terms of the common focus on addressing and trying to solve problems that both action learning/research/knowledge-building models (as the basis of ‘stories’ of learning or problem-solving) and explicit story structures (typically as forms of virtual action learning cycles exemplified by the concept of ‘thought experiments’) might begin to be recognized as alternately micro and macros cycles of informal lifelong learning. That is, as we propose further below, the lifecycle exemplifies the four key stages of a ‘generic experiential learning cycle’ making sense of the initial chaos or discreteness of perceptions and communications: the foundation of direct and immediate experience, emergent comprehension (involving reflective awareness both in and on experience), recognition refined by or as continuing reflection, and an integrated surface translation or possible deep-level transformation of experience and thus ‘part-whole relations’ into a related process of knowledge building. Figure 2. Beyond Kolb’s confusion: Towards an integrated model of experiential learning

As depicted in Figure 2, such a revised model helps clarify that Kolb’s version tends to confuse a second and subsequent cycle of intentional intervention or future planning based on memories or records and evidence from the past. As Jarvis (1987) for instance has touched upon, the glaring absence in Kolb’s model is prior knowledge embracing both the individual and collective domains. In other words, just as there are the two generic modes of simple and closed feedback loops (input-output and action-effect), also in natural self-organising systems and likewise human processes of interactions are also transformed as thought, language-use, and communication. In similar fashion to the double cycles of listening and speaking, reading and writing and even learning and teaching, this involves a direct process of comprehending experience as a transformative cycle in both space (constructing schemas) and time (how such initial schemas inform further or ongoing experience). In this way direct human experience not only links with but interacts with both (a) the secondary or indirect cognitive-social domain as well applied or performative process of knowledge-building, and (b) a linked but interactive cycle of ‘action’ and thus also ‘reflective practice’ as spontaneous events, planned interventions or specific constructions of meaning (including speech or thought as well as physical and social ‘acts’) - either as trial and error experimentation vs. repetition/reinforcement or an intentional ‘opening up’ or ‘closing down’ of all human systems of representation as either positive or negative self-fulfilling prophecies (expectations). Just as the Kolb model can be interpreted to really link two cycles (the related passive-active processes and feedback loops of comprehension and intentional activity) so too the human lifecycle might be better understood to similarly involve two overlapping cycles or ‘arcs’ grounded in the physical reality of the developing but also ageing human body – the externally referenced concerns and achievements of ‘social


7 identity’ and the inner story rather of self-development and emergent self-knowledge. The integrated lifelong education framework for optimal learning throughout the key stages of human lifecycle development was thus conceived in relation to the naturally systemic structure represented by the four most critical crises as well as stages of the completed human lifecycle – the basis also for better appreciating, understanding, and engaging with the complementary tensions which inform the eight pillars of lifelong education described in the appendix model. A related assumption articulated by Marton & Saljo in their (1996) model of six surface-to-deep conceptions of learning is that the basic mode of deep learning (the ‘active search for meaning’ rather than passive observation and mere reproduction of the ‘parts’ of any whole) is not only transformed as modes of ‘understanding the world’ but at the deepest and highest level as a process of ‘developing as a person’. The pivotal attribute of deep learning described by Marton & Saljo is most significantly the function of ‘relating ideas to previous knowledge and experience’. In contrast to the modern formal teaching and learning paradigm on the left, Figure 3 also represents on the right-hand side our natural and integrated systems model of optimal lifelong education and learning. It represents a model of human resilience-building which naturally extends at the social level to a related model of sustainable development as integrated domains (not just discrete ‘pillars’) of environmental, social, and economic sustainability (Richards, 2015; Burns, 2015). In other words, lifelong learning as a focus of the sustainable development of the individual life corresponds to sustainable development as a greater ‘lifelong learning’ imperative of whole societies and indeed the world. Optimal learning in this view exemplifies and is supported by emergent rather than top-down processes of ‘teaching’ as open (or interactive) rather than closed ‘feedback loops’ as surface or transmission learning. It is a process also mediated for the lifelong earner as independent rather than ‘co-dependent’ resilience-building. Figure 3. A systems view of the educational transition from surface to deep learning

Discussion: Lifelong learning and a new framework for 21C education As developed and discussed further in related papers (Richards, 2016a; 2016b) we propose a human lifecycle model of lifelong learning as a basis for reconciling (or rather converging) the often conflicting notions of lifelong learning indicated above. Such a general model also aims to provide a more appropriate


8 and sustainable foundation for clarifying the exciting possibilities as well as great future importance of the concept as an emerging framework for an inherently diverse but global education system in the 21st century. This is as well as a renewed focus for promoting ‘active learning’ for every human in every situation whether defined in personal, social, or professional domains of both policy and practical relevance. It will develop this in terms of a point generally recognized both in the fields of (both formal and non-formal) education as well as outside, that actual and therefore lifecycle experience grounded in everyday activities and extracurricular resources outside as well as inside either formal or non-formal educational contexts is the informal learning foundation of individual human development in social and also physical contexts (Rogers, 2005). Imperatives of ageing societies and cultural demoralization around the world and the global knowledge economy have prompted governments everywhere to increasingly recognize and support a general model of lifelong education where both informal learning modes and non-formal options of education are both generally interpreted with reference to (and as additions to) the modern formal education system. However, from the point of view of every individual lifecycle grounded in the informal learning of experience, learning is a lifelong process involving informal, formal and non-formal modes of learning generally corresponding to unstructured, semis-structured, and structured activities and processes. In other words, human experience goes beyond the behavioral reinforcement of a merely ‘animal’ stimulus response to experience to involve constructive or dialogical cognitive and social processes of learning transformation. This frames learner development not just in infancy and youth but all through life. In this way (and condensing or confusing some of the steps) Kolb (1984) developed his model of experiential learning to depict the optimal process of how active learners are able to transform direct experience (and also the secondary-level ‘experiencing’ of awareness and also reflection in and on experience) into useful and applied forms of human knowledge. As discussed, a reframing of Kolb in terms of both input-output and action-effective feedback cycles (corresponding to surface and deep learning modes) reflects four common stages – the foundation of direct or immediate experience, emergent awareness, continuing action learning or reflective practice, and the integrated transformation of experience into knowledge. The ‘quality of experience’ micro cycle involves these four key stages - which also correspond to the macro stages of the human lifecycle exemplified by the four most pivotal life crises (see Figure 4). Figure 4. The four pivotal crises (and the outward vs. inward arcs) of the human lifecycle

Adapted from Richards 2016a


9 Such a model represents an adaptation of Eric Erikson’s (1998) later ‘lifecycle completion’ re-conception of his own famous eight stages and related transitional ‘crises’ of life model – or life ‘transitions’ as Levinson (1978) preferred to put it. His revised model was posthumously interpreted by his wife in the appendix to this publication to indicate an additional ninth stage corresponding to Tornstam’s (2005) endof-life stage of gerotranscendence. This is a stage held to involve renewed elements of acceptance, satisfaction and even celebration of life along with a ‘wise’ review of impending death as part of any natural cycle process. Initially formulated as a psychosocial adaptation of Freud’s psychosexual focus on the young infant, the initial life stage of childhood before adolescence is actually covered by four of Erikson’s model of life stages of human development. In short, our adaptation here in terms of the four most pivotal crises of the human lifecyle recognizes that the critical phase of infancy is clearly (as Erikson himself recognized) the initial trust crisis or dilemma when a child is born into the world and needs to be supported to achieve an initial independence to interact with both physical and social environments. As represented in his wellknown studies of Luther and Gandhi, Erikson also recognized the critical stage of ‘stable ego’ or identity formation and ongoing reinforcement in the identity crisis transition from childhood or adolescence more specifically to adulthood. These studies also recognized how such transitions can be amplified by external events or identity crises as the triggers for great opportunities for personal development. The most pivotal transition of the whole lifecycle is the so-called mid-life crisis linked to either the conflict between or potential transition from the identity cycle and another of potentially emergent self-knowledge. As exemplified also by Viktor Frankl’s related concept of the ‘existential crisis’ concerning the meaning of ‘a life’ (and the meaning of life more widely) this is also an ever-present lifecycle challenge or opportunity to conduct a life-review. Such an adaptation of Erikson’s model is consistent with Carl Jung’s model of four key life stages (childhood, youth, maturity and old age) which similarly invoked notions of the four ages of life influential in the West since ancient Greece as well as the four seasons metaphor of life course (also applied by Levinson) common in many traditional cultures (Kastenbaum, 1993). A revised model of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs might also be interpreted to usefully complement the Erikson framework of development to convergently represent a systemic view of a lifelong learner that undergoes different emphases as well as stages of development in any human life. Such a view recognizes how the developmental aspects of human adaptation to environment inevitably link biological, social and cognitive aspects of thought and behavior within a greater framework of lifelong learning. Maslow’s model can be viewed systemically as an interplay of essentially physical, social and self-development domains from a spatial perspective which tends to mainly focus on extrinsic motivations before the level and process self-actualisation. This is in similar to how the different views of Vygotsky and Piaget on the cognitive development of children to adult maturity are typically are seen as conflicting but might be reconciled. Piaget’s emphasis on cognitive development as emergent abstract thinking grounded in both biological and psychological processes of maturation as well as human language-use distinguishes between the ongoing assimilation of experience and transformational accommodations at the deep level of underlying cognitive schemas. Vygotsky’s contrasting view of cognitive development as basically a social process of thinking grounded in language-use – and by extension in social values and cultural associations rather than experience per se - is typically described as a process of internalisation. Recent adaptations of Piaget’s model in terms of the integrative functions of ‘postformal’ (e.g. Berger, 2014) and ‘reversibility’ (e.g. Tubert-Oklander, 2013) modes of thinking are actually complementary to the transformational processes of dialogue in some corresponding adaptations of Vygotsky (1986). In this way as Mayer (2009) has suggested, Dewey’s lifelong education model of experiential learning can provide a framework for the


10 alternate approaches of Piaget and Vygotksy. Or, to put this another way, Piaget’s psychological model and related concrete-abstract continuum of cognitive development and the Vygotskyian conception (as well as corresponding lower vs. higher order learning continuum) of thinking, language-use and communication as fundamentally and convergently a socialization process together represent interdependent functions and experiential learning ‘loops’ – a kind of horizontal ‘middle’ layer at the intersection between the microlevel experiential learning cycle and the macro knowledge-building domain of the human lifecycle. Figure 5. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs re-framed: A natural systems view of the lifelong learner

Adapted from Richards 2016b

A re-framed version of Maslow’s hierarchy of basic human needs compares with how the Erikson model generally takes a rather temporal perspective on the unfolding or growing and learning as the basic intrinsic motivation of each individual life. Therefore, Figure 5 depicts a convergent outward arc (or externallyfocused lifelong ‘surface learning’ loop) in the transition between or linking of physical and social levels of need in the Maslow model giving way to but also complementing the ‘inward’ arc (i.e. the internallyreferenced lifelong ‘deep learning’ loop). This moves from emotional neediness to a level or process of self-actualisation – which Maslow generally defined as the individual process of achieving various potential lying at the ‘farther end of human nature’. Maslow’s additional reference to the peak experiences (and the related concept of ongoing or sustained plateau experiences) of healthy individuals to describe the process of actually achieving self-actualisation accords with related notions of optimal learning or what Gross (1991) refers to as ‘peak’ lifelong learning. As part of his ‘humanistic education’ recommendation, Maslow outlined a related a notion of intrinsic learning that clearly represents a useful conception of lifelong learning: “learning to be a human being, and second, learning to be this human being’ (p.164). The extended table in the appendix of this paper outlines how the model developed here might be rigorously, comprehensively and relevantly conceived as a framework. This is as well as basis for clarifying the future role and direction of lifelong education and also its relation to the primary, transformational and deep-level (and also higher order thinking or reflective practice) process of lifelong learning. It applies a 21 st Century (21C) layer and perspective which can only just be touched upon here about how lifelong education is in the process of reframing the modern education system and its negative relationship to the domains of nonformal education and informal and experiential learning more widely. In this way related optimal models of learning represent a new imperative of 21st Century education development (e.g. Van Menon, 1990) . As indicated, a convergent view of the experiential learning cycle may be usefully seen as also a micro ‘informal learning’ cycle ultimately linked to a related macro cycle of human lifelong development – that is, in terms of the link between the related concepts of the ‘quality of experience’ and the ‘quality of life’. Just as Alan Davies discusses the transition from informal learning to informal education as intentions or designs to harness the regular opportunities and endless possibilities of our ‘constant experience’, so a similar alignment of external events and internal imperatives may be held to reflect the convergent interplay of human individual identity ‘social maintenance’ and the deep learning purposes of the human capacity


11 for self-development, self-knowledge and what Maslow and others might refer to as self-transcendence. The distinction made above to the convergent yet distinct external vs. internal cycles of experience implicit in but often confused in applications of the (micro) Kolb learning cycle model therefore have a systemic correspondence to our related view of similarly convergent yet distinct individual identity and selfdevelopment cycles of the influential lifelong cycle model of human development described by Eric Erikson. We have adapted the surface vs. deep learning distinction to discuss how these alternately micro and macro cycles of human experience involve both externally and internally referenced feedback loops. This is along the lines of Agyris and Schon’s related distinction between single and double learning loops at play in terms of how modes of reflection and meaningful action (i.e. our thinking and doing) are or should also be interdependent collective as well as individual cognitive functions of ‘reflective practice’ to harness experience in any or every situation throughout the various stages of the human lifecycle. In this view the mid-life crisis might be interpreted to represent a transition from the surface learning of externallyreferenced individual identity to the rather deep informal learning focus of life as also a process of selfknowledge. But as Viktor Frankl (1984) has recognised in terms of the ever-present threat or opportunity of different forms of ‘existential crisis’, this alignment may be either sustainably achieved or provisionally harnessed for guidance at any and every stage of life. In this way, David Kolb (1984) was insightful to realise that in early and later stages of life the different styles as well as stages of his model of the learning cycle involve an integrated and not just specialized function of identification based on work or social roles. Dominant and conventional notions of learning have been turned on their head by the emerging model of ‘neuroplasticity’ which recognizes that brain development is ongoing to the end, and also that ‘deep learning’ cognitive activity grounded in experience can renew as well as extend brain capacity and thought processes. The important implications of this for lifelong learning’ (Guglielman, 2012) are helping us to realize that that people are never too old to learn if they retain or regularly practice a proactive expectation, effort, and attitude or intention (i.e. a positive self-fulfilling prophecy). Another is the role of new digital technologies for both endless online information access (i.e. the internet as a development which forever subverted the unquestioned authority of teachers to be automatically right about everything) and even more significantly for promoting digital social networks of interaction, community, and knowledge-sharing – a lifeline also for those isolated, sick or incapacitated. This is a lifecycle basis for creativity and innovation just as relevant for the elderly as it for the young, a basis for ‘learning to learn again’ in the inward arc of life just as it is a foundation of ‘learning to learn’ in the outward arc of youth. And it also refers to how globalization as a cultural rather than economic imperative is linking up people everywhere from both traditional collectivist and modern individualistic cultures (i.e. overcoming or rather reframing transitional imperatives of social as well as knowledge diversification, fragmentation and complexity). This is a process we like to refer to as global knowledge convergence (e.g. Richards, 2013a). The key function of life reviews throughout life as well as towards the end of life to achieve a ‘balanced’ self-evaluation (usually by correcting or balancing unfair negative self-images or unbalanced bad memories) recalls the generic challenge and purpose of reflective evaluation in and on experience and the experiential or action learning cycle to strike a ‘constructive evaluation’ balance. This is a balance between the passivity-inducing approach of overly negative or mistakes-focused criticism (i.e. typical of the general assessment strategy of modern formal education) and also the opposite tendency to ‘uncritical positivity’ or inflated self-esteem which may also set people up for negative self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. This corresponds to the related ‘opposite errors’ of experiential learning identified by Donald Schon’s (1974) reflective practitioner model - doing without thinking and thinking without doing. In relation to the


12 constructive purposes of life reviews, the basic story of the overall human lifecycle is whether or to what extent a person has ‘held it together’ as they navigated the interplay of innate purposes and life ambitions in relation to specific and often changing situations. In this way, also, we have a comparatively universal basis for appreciating or self-evaluating and judging (a) that a noble failure can be greatly superior to merely ‘playing it safe’ or being risk-free in life, and (b) that an ‘inner process’ achievement of sustained integrity may ultimately be more meaningful than any superficial identity or mere record of external and apparent achievement. Figure 6 projects an additional model of future education providing two basic contrasts. One is between the modern formal education system (centered around schooling preparing learners or students for higher education) and a wider, emerging, and future integrated framework of lifelong education - see appendix. The second contrast is between this ‘21C’ lifelong education framework (secondary process) and a related new or emerging paradigm of optimal lifelong learning which is the primary process of both experience and development. In contrast to how such a notion of deep learning is rather the exception and generally an ‘add-on’ to the surface learning tendencies of modern formal education, it is the recognized role of future lifelong education to frame, support and encourage optimal learning, constructive knowledge building and reflective practice as performance across a range of formal as well as non-formal and informal learning contexts. The transition to a new paradigm has been given impetus by the strong forces of global change which extend from new requirements of complex problem-solving to imperatives of social and cultural diversity through to the ‘fragmentation’ of old and increasingly inadequate structures of knowledge and education – indeed a twentieth-first century threshold of change. Just as the hidden curriculum of lifelong education remains ‘socialization’ even in a fast-changing and globalized world, so too the hidden curriculum of lifelong learning also remains the biological, psychological, and self-knowledge imperatives of human lifecycle development. Figure 6. Towards an integrated lifelong education framework to support optimal lifelong learning

Conclusion This paper has investigated the ‘informal learning’ correspondences between the micro cycle experiential basis of much human learning (and knowledge) on one hand, and on the other the macro lifecycle framework of lifelong learning and personal as well as collective development. Linking to Alan Davies’ insightful framework for distinguishing informal, non-formal and formal learning vs. education, it has especially focused on the challenge of better understanding, applying and harnessing the power of various modes as well as stages of experiential learning. To do this it has specifically addressed the ostensible SCU Scholarship of Teaching Symposium – 12 October 2016

13 dilemma or contradiction of David Kolb’s well-known experiential learning cycle model. This was reframed as an integrated approach recognizing the function of ‘prior knowledge’ (generally missing in Kolb’s model). This convergent new model was also framed in terms of how there are really two distinct types of feedback loops (input-output and action-effect). Both emergently and convergently interact in all natural (including human) systems (i.e. all natural systems having an ‘internal axis’ of self-organisation lacking in artificial or mechanical systems). The paper has thus proposed to recognise that the micro experiential cycles of informal learning can be regularly and coherently harnessed throughout the larger macro cycle(s) of meaningful human lifelong (or lifecycle) development – as endless lifelong learning opportunities which through intention or design might be transformed into a process of lifelong education. In this way, the paper has linked the initial inquiry into experiential learning to the larger related comprehensive framework of the eight pillars of Twenty-First Century lifelong education. References Argyris, C. & Schön, D.A. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective, AddisonWesley, Reading, MA. Berger, K. (2014). Invitation to the Life Span, 2 nd edn., Worth Publishers Bernard B. (2004). Resiliency: What we have learnt, WestEd. Biggs, J. & Tan,C. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at university, Open University Press. Billett, S. (2010). The perils of confusing lifelong learning with lifelong education, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 29 (4), Borg, C. & Mayo, P. (2005). The EU memorandum on lifelong learning, Old wine in new bottles?, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 3(2), 203-225. Burns, H. (2015). Transformative sustainability pedagogy: Learning from ecological systems and indigenous wisdom, Journal of Transformative Education, 13(3) 259-276. Calderon, A. (2012). Massification continues to transform higher education,University World News, Issue No:237, Retrieved http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120831155341147 Crick, D., Stringher,C. & Ren,K.(2014). Learning to learn: International perspectives from theory and practice, Routledge. European Union Commission (2001). Making a European area of lifelong learning a reality, COM Document, Retrieved http://aei.pitt.edu/42878/ Erikson, E. (1998). The life cycle completed, W.W.Norton Egan, K. (1997). The educated mind: How cognitive tools shape our understanding. Chicago UP. Fejes,A. 2014). Lifelong and employability, in Zarifis, G. & Gravani, M. (eds) (2014). Challenging the ‘European area of lifelong Learning’, Springer. Field, R. Burke, R, & Cooper, C. (eds) (2013). Aging, work and society, Sage. Frankl, V. (1984). Man’s search for meaning, 3rd edn, Simon & Schuster. Gatto, J. (1992). Dumbing us down: The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling, New Society. Gross, R. (1991). Peak learning, rev. edn., Tarcher. Guglielman, E. (2012). The ageing brain: Neuroplasticity and lifelong learning, Elearning Papers, Retrieved https://www.academia.edu/2039409/The_Ageing_Brain_Neuroplasticity_and_Lifelong_Learning Hayes, C. (1998). Beyond the American dream. Lifelong learning and the search for meaning in a postmodern world, Wasilla: Autodidactic Press. Jarvis, P. (1987) Adult Learning in the Social Context, London: Croom Helm. Jarvis, P. (2008). Democracy, lifelong learning and the learning society: Active citizenship in late modern age. Routledge. Jarvis, P. (2009). The European Union lifelong learning policies, in P.Jarvis & M.Watts, Routledge international handbook of lifelong learning, Routledge


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16 Appendix: The eight pillars of lifelong education: Towards an integrated 21C list of lifelong learning aspects, activities, and domains 1.

2.

3.

4.

Tacit knowledge – explicit knowledge axis [Foundational] Central focus – informal (experiential and social) learning Indigenous knowledge Distance education resources Culture/tradition Social learning (e.g. public awareness campaigns) Language communities Youth, education and employability policies Organizational learning Sustainable development Team-work and cooperative learning Macro stakeholder exchange (business/industry, community, government, education/research) Learning ‘communities of practice’ Knowledge management Sufficiency/ resilience training/ community Global systems/networks of education, knowledge based learning centres and information Active learner – ‘Teaching’ dialogue or relationship [Emergent] Central focus – formal education/ disciplinary learning Self-directed/flexible learning Mentor Learning to learn Coach Problem/inquiry/project based learning Educational designer Experiential learning Learning facilitator Outcomes-based learning/GROW model Educational leader/manager Internships, traineeships, apprenticeships Therapist/ counselor [Continuing] professional /social development – personal interest and enrichment education/learning] Central focus – non-formal education opportunities Adult education Special interest groups/courses Workplace training/learning Hobby groups/courses Executive courses/workshops Online/social media knowledge communities Participatory/customized education/postgraduate Self-help and personal growth/development study seminars/books/ training (eg stress management) Privatization, marketization, ‘credentialisation’ of ‘Invisible universities’ (libraries, museums, Web both non-formal and formal education resources, and oral networks/ traditions, etc.) Continuing professional education/ social Open universities/ virtual colleges, free mass development (employability) distance education (MOOCs, etc.) Lifecycle review and completion/’meaning of life’ insights [sustainable optimization] Central focus – integrated (and esp. seniors) lifelong learning Third age education (e.g. University of Third age) Fourth age learning – Keeping active, mentally – ‘learning to learn again’ stimulated, and ‘connected’ Retirement/post-work transitions (leisure, Helping older people maintain their independence adventure, finding new interests and staying and quality of life at home (or with better aged socially connected) and palliative care provision) Health maintenance courses and programs Life reviews (family histories/albums, oral/ digital (physical, social, and cognitive exercises) stories, active dreaming workshops, etc.) New literacies for old folks in a fast-changing Lifelong learning and plastic brain(neuroplasticity) world (courses in financial/legal literacy, new – brain fitness PLUS learn new knowledge to the ICTs, etc.) end Customized seniors interest groups/courses Meditation, ‘acceptance’/’appreciation’, and ‘meaning-making’ training and courses Wisdom/’meaning’/self-knowledge studies Lifecycle completion Note: This list is not conceived to be definitive or exclusive. It is a provisional and suggestive attempt to provide a comprehensive overview and framework. This is with particular relevance to the developmental or lifecycle links to the interplay of informal, non-formal and also formal (also unstructured, semi-structure and structured) modes of social as well as individual learning and related education provision.
