Date of Award
12-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Selected Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Educational Leadership for Diverse Learning Communities
Department
Education
School
School of Education and Human Services
Abstract
The dominant educational paradigm is rooted in a Platonic, Cartesian, and Piagetian mind-supremacist epistemology that subordinates the body and experience to the mind, ideas, and objective concepts. This reduces students to cognitive receptors of information in a detached, decontextualized, and dehumanizing classroom, i.e., the banking educational model (Freire, 2018; hooks,1994). Students are forced to sit at desks for several hours a day and expected to open their minds and ignore the body’s needs. This educational model is dehumanizing because it only approaches students and learning through one epistemological lens and separates learning from the world. On the other hand, experiential learning is rooted in the educational philosophy of Dewey, Kolb, and Freire. It is a context-based educational paradigm that situates learning in real-world experiences where students can learn naturally and organically. This educational modality can help bridge the synthetic divide between the mind and body fostered in traditional educational paradigms. This postformal autoethnographic study explored students' transformative educational experiences in an Experiential Learning Academy, a two-year experiential learning Associate degree program. The researcher interviewed six student participants using semi-structured interview questions and artifact elicitation. Next, three participants provided the researcher with three songs representing their educational experiences. These three participants then participated in a follow-up, experiential ‘car karaoke’ dialogue group session, which involved a drive to and on the beach while drinking milkshakes and eating French fries. The use of music and memento elicitation fostered a more whole and embodied approach to data collection. During analysis, the researcher used art/ artifact creation to help embody the analysis process and to promote wholeness. The study’s findings demonstrate how an Experiential Learning Academy fosters a whole-person, humanizing environment that promotes wholeness through dialogue and openness. A humanizing and whole-person educational approach considers the social, historical, emotional, and environmental complexity of human individuals and, in doing so, fosters an accepting, open, and dialogic community.
Related Pillar(s)
Study
Recommended Citation
Karahalis, Eric Anthony, "Beaches, Bumps, and Milkshakes: A Humanizing, Open, and Dialogic, Postformal Autoethnographic Study of an Experiential Learning Academy" (2023). Theses & Dissertations. 181.
https://digitalcommons.molloy.edu/etd/181
