My brother and I are trying to create hands-on learning experiences for our kids together — camping trips, building projects, that kind of thing — but we have completely different ideas about how much we should guide versus let them discover. I lean toward Dewey's idea that kids learn from genuine problems they encounter, while he's always trying to engineer 'teachable moments' and debrief everything. The kids are picking up on our different approaches and I worry we're confusing them more than helping them learn.
More people experience this than they realize.
Two adults sharing responsibility for children's education are discovering that their different beliefs about guided versus emergent experience are creating inconsistency rather than enrichment.
“Where Are You with Experiential learning — Dewey and Kolb?”
If this sounds familiar, the Library can help you find the bigger picture.