EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: A CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING APPROACH FOR HOLISTIC LEARNER DEVELOPMENT

Education as a field is constantly evolving which continuously adapts its structure, vision and objectives which
enables it to successfully meet the challenges and significant changes occurring in society. Experiential learning
is a suitable alternative which directly focuses on the skills and attitudes related to critical thinking and problem
solving, being less reliant on mechanical learning and memorizing. We can describe experiential learning as a
process. Experiences that we have in our daily lives are generated through our various ongoing interactions and
engagement with the world around us and thus learning becomes a definite product of our experience.
Experiential learning theory is different from the various other learning theories as it focuses on a more holistic
approach. Experiences play a very important role in our learning; they are formed by the interaction of our
emotions, cognition and environmental factors. In this paper we aim to look at how experiential learning
provides a great scope for research as to what the experiential learning cycle looks like, the practical use in
order to improve upon the human thought process and understand the learning in a better way thus giving an
insight into the benefits of this model of learning, and its application in different areas of life.