Several years ago I had the pleasure of working for an e-learning and publishing company where I managed the creation of a Microsoft Certified Training (MCT) program.

Along with managing the creation of the 5-day work shop, I authored the section on Adult Learning Theory. While researching several concepts, I came across the Experiential Learning Theory proposed by David Kolb:

Experiential learning theory defines learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.”

In an essay from the book Managing as Designing entitled “Designing Learning”, co-author of the article Paul Eickmann notes:

“You know, for art students learning is not text driven.” This stood in dramatic contrast with management education, which is almost entirely organized around texts that deliver an authoritative scientific discourse. The scientific basis of the management curriculum was established in 1959 by an influential Carnegie Foundation report that sought to improve the intellectual respectability of management education by grounding it in three scientific disciplines: economics, mathematics, and behavioral science.

Education in the Arts focuses on approaches to learning as: Aesthetic, Demo-practice-production-critique, Recursive, Theory and Practice, Showing, Expression, Individualized, with a Diverse Faculty.

By comparison, Management Education focuses on the polar opposite elements: Scientific, Test driven, Discursive, Theory, Telling, Impression, Batched, with an Abstract Faculty.

Instead of holding stead-fast to our own perceptions, which have been formed largely through post-secondary and post-graudate curricula; perhaps we need to see the world through the eyes of those whose strengths have been shaped by the very educational institutions we hold in such high esteem.