50 | COSERE 1.7 Collaborative practices – interdisciplinary collaboration. “Piaget’s theory of constructivism argues that people produce knowledge and form meaning based upon their experiences. Piaget’s theory covered learning theories, teaching methods, and education reform. Two of the key components which create the construction of an individual’s new knowledge are accommodation and assimilation. Assimilating causes an individual to incorporate new experiences into the old experiences. This causes the individual to develop new outlooks, rethink what was once misunderstandings, and evaluate what is important, ultimately altering their perceptions. Accommodation, on the other hand, is reframing the world and new experiences into the mental capacity already present. Individuals conceive a particular fashion in which the world operates. When things do not operate within that context, they must accommodate and [reframe] the expectations with the outcomes” (TeAchnology, 2024). Constructivism, therefore, hinges on the individual’s construction of their own learning by experiencing it and subsequently mapping it against their own mental model of reality, this model itself having been informed by past knowledge and experiences. Experiential learning does share the premise of being informed by experience, but how does it differ from constructivism? Essentially, while experiential learning is also based on the significance of direct experience in the learning process, less emphasis is placed on conscious participation in the personal creation of knowledge than in the case of constructivism. It is less fixated on individual examples of experience fermenting into learning, and more on a continuous process of evolution facilitated by reflection and active experimentation. In short, “Experiential learning is a constructivist learning theory defined as ‘learning by doing’. The learner is an active participant in the educational process, and learning is achieved through a continuous cycle of inquiry, reflection, analysis and synthesis” (Bartle, 2015). Do you know about this pedagogical theory’s relationship with interdisciplinary collaboration, though?
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