LEARNING STRATEGIES AND SCHOOL MOTIVATION IN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING VS. TRADITIONAL LEARNING

"Introduction: In recent years, European innovation policies in education have focused on preventing early school leaving and functional illiteracy. In this context of innovation in education, experiential learning has proven to have unique qualities for both teachers and students. Thus, the main motivation of this paper was to show that experiential teaching methods and techniques in primary education are able to produce significant improvements in learning strategies and school motivation in young students. Objectives: The aim of this this study was to explore the differences in learning strategies and school motivation on young students who had benefitted from Experiential Learning, in contrast with those following direct learning instructional methods Methods: This study was performed using two groups of subjects. The first group (experimental group) included 60 students taught by experiential methods and the second group (control group) included 60 students taught by traditional methods. All students were in the fourth grade in an urban school. Differences in learning strategies and school motivation were explored by applying School Motivation and Learning Strategies Inventory - SMALSI (Stroud & Reynolds, 2006) to both the experimental group and the control group. SMALSI is structured in 9 dimensions - 6 strengths: study strategies, note-taking / listening skills, reading / comprehension strategies, writing skills / research, strategies used in tests, techniques for organizing / managing time; and 3 weaknesses are: low academic motivation, test anxiety, concentration difficulties / paying attention. To determine the differences in the students’ mean scores, descriptive as well as inferential statistical analyses were performed on the data. Results: The results showed that an experiential teaching model produces positive results in all evaluated strengths and in two of the three weak points investigated, namely in academic motivation and test anxiety. Statistically insignificant effects are in terms of attention / concentration difficulties, they may be more dependent on physiological and psychological maturation and less on the teaching methods, but also may be a direction of further research. Conclusions: The findings of this study could significantly help teachers looking for viable solutions to optimize students school results, increase school motivation and improve learning strategies in primary school."