Experience This¡ The Experiential Approach to Teaching Environmental Issues

Abstract

Experiential education has been promoted by John Dewey and Paulo Freire since the first half of the twentieth century. Freire called the type of teaching where students are passive “banking education.” In this first person account I describe my shift from teaching environmental issues in the traditional style to teaching in an experiential style. As a result of this shift, which involves no lecturing or “banking” on my part, students have rated me as a more...