Conceptions of Integrating Students’ Experiences

Abstract

As noted in earlier chapters, there is growing interest in providing higher education students with experiences in practice settings and then integrating them within educational programs. Now, that workplace experiences are becoming a component of a wide array of higher education programs, the interest in this integration has grown accordingly. Yet, few explanatory accounts exist about what constitutes such integrations and, therefore, how they might be best enacted as part of the curriculum and engaged with by learners (e.g. students, workers or apprentices). The integration of these two sets of experiences can be explained in a number of ways. One is to consider the qualities and characteristics of each physical and social setting (i.e. universities and workplaces), and as objective entities, and identify their potential contributions to students’ learning, and reconcile and aggregate these experiences. Conversely, another focuses on individuals as meaning makers, and the exercise of their reconciliation of what they encounter and develop further through their experiences across these settings. A third explanation is a dualistic socio-personal account that views the integration of experiences as processes through which each setting affords learners’ particular experiences and accounts for how they engage with, construe and reconcile those experiences as directed by their interests, capacities and cognitive experience. This case is advanced here, elaborated and discussed as a means of understanding the process of students’ reconciliation of those experiences and how it might be promoted in higher education.