Taiwanese University Students' Perspectives on Experiential Learning and Psychosocial Development

This study described the relations of experiential learning and psychosocial development of Taiwanese university students through the qualitative method of phenomenology. Thirty-six students, age ranged from 19 to 25 years, from three research-oriented universities in northern Taiwan were interviewed. Seven themes were delineated: (1) discovering interests and potential; (2) forming conceptual framework, stimulating thinking, and taking action; (3) accepting differences and developing empathy; (4) gaining new experiences and managing emotions; (5) practicing cooperation and communication skills and enhancing interpersonal competence; (6) rectifying mistakes and enhancing interpersonal skills; and (7) enhancing self-understanding and establishing self-identity. The findings indicated that university students have been inevitably exercising the frame of experiential learning in their psychosocial development in many aspects of life, especially on building self-identity. Key words: university student, psychosocial development, experiential learning ********** University career is often viewed as one of the most important stages to bring substantial growth and development for young adults. Scholars have long acknowledged the importance of learning and development over those years, and identified the impacts on an individual's future life (Erikson, 1963; Lin, 2006; 2010). The college years are a time of significant growth in the individual's adaptive capacities in the cognitive, emotional, and social domains (Zuschlag & Whitboume, 1994). Furthermore, during this crucial phase, university students face various significant psychosocial developmental tasks that can have a noteworthy effect on their development. Over past 30 years, the number of university arose from 30s to more than 160 , and, consequently, the number of university students has increased significantly from two hundred and sixty thousand in 1980s, to more than 1.2 million in 2015 (Ministry of Education, 2015). University students in Taiwan not only have to cope with a rapidly changing educational environment and society, but also to deal with a high level of stress and radical competition (Hsu, 2005; Lin, 2006). Thus, facilitating students to develop well has become an important issue for counselors, student affair professionals, educators, and policy makers. After their arrival on the university campus, a majority of Taiwanese university students started to widely explore their campus lives and gained experiences in various aspects of this new environment. Experiential learning has been identified as effective for adults to learn and grow from their daily lives (e.g., Lu, 2007; Merriam & Clark, 2006). In this study, the researchers explored the relations and mutual influences between experiential learning and student psychosocial development; and described students' experiences of employing experiential learning style to enhance their psychosocial development. Experiential Learning Theory Experiential learning theory (ELT) (Kolb, 1984) notes that learning occurs when people engage in challenging experiences and then reflect on the outcomes of those experiences. It describes how experience is transformed into learning through a cycle of experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting (Kolb & Kolb, 2009). Knowledge grows when people are challenged by information obtained via experience. They gain skill acquisition portraying that challenging experiences facilitate skill development by motivating individuals to exert additional effort to acquire the skills demanded of them (Kanfer & Ackerman, 1989). Kolb (1984) conceptualized that learning from experience requires: (1) an openness and willingness to involve oneself in new experiences (concrete experience); (2) observational and reflective skills to view these new experiences from a variety of perspectives (reflective observation); (3) analytical abilities to integrate ideas and concepts created from their observations (abstract conceptualization); and (4) decision-making and problem-solving skills to put these new ideas and concepts in practice (active experimentation). …