Cone of Experience
The Cone of Experience is a visual model, a
pictorial device that presents bands of experience arranged according to degree
of abstraction and not degree of difficulty. The farther you go from the bottom
of the cone, the more abstract the experience becomes.
Dale (1969) asserts that:
The
pattern of arrangement of the bands of experience is not difficulty but degree
of abstraction – the amount of immediate sensory participation that is
involved. A still photograph of a tree is not more difficult to understand than
a dramatization of Hamlet. It is simply in itself a less concrete teaching
material than the dramatization. (Dale, 1969)
Dale further explains that “the individual bands of
the Cone of Experience stand for experiences that are fluid, extensive, and
continually interact” (Dale, 1969) It should not be taken literally in its
simplified form. The different kinds of sensory aid often overlap and sometimes
blend into one another. Motion pictures can be silent or they can combine sight
and sound. Students may merely view a demonstration or they may view it then
participate in it.
Does the Cone of Experience mean that all teaching
and learning must move systematically from base to pinnacle, from direct
purposeful experiences to verbal symbols? Dale (1969) categorically says:
….
No. we continually shuttle back and forth among various kinds of experiences.
Every day each of us acquires new concrete experience – through walking on the
street, gardening, dramatics and endless other means. Such learning by doing,
such pleasurable return to the concrete is natural throughout our lives – and
at every age level. On the other hand, both the older child and the young pupil
make abstractions every day may need in doing this well.
In our teaching, then, we do not always begin with
direct experience at the base of the Cone. Rather, we begin with the kind of
experience that is most appropriate to needs and abilities of particular
learner in a particular learning situation. Then, of course, we vary this
experience with many other types of learning activities. (Dale, 1969)
One kind of sensory
experience is not necessarily more educationally useful than another. Sensory
experiences are mixed and interrelated. When students listen to you as you give
your lecturette, they do not just have an auditory experience. They also have
visual experience in the sense that they are “reading” your facial expressions
and bodily gestures.We face some risk when we
overemphasize the amount of direct experience to learn a concept. Too much
reliance on concrete experience may actually obstruct the process of meaningful
generalization. The best will be striking a balance between concrete and
abstract, direct participation and symbolic expression for the learning that
will continue throughout life.
It is true the older a person is,
the more abstract his concepts are likely to be. This can be attributed to
physical maturation, more vivid experience and sometimes greater motivation for
learning. But an older student does not live purely in his world of abstract
ideas just a child does not live only in the world of sensory experience. Both
old and young shuttle in a world of the concrete and the abstract.
What are these bands of
experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience? It is best to look back at the Cone
itself. But let us expound on each of them starting with the most direct.
DIRECT PURPOSEFUL EXPERIENCE – these are first hand experiences
which serves as the foundation of our learning. We build up our reservoir of
meaningful information and ideas through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and
smelling. In the context of the teaching-learning process, it is learning by
doing. If I want my student to learn how to focus in compound light microscope,
I will let him focus one, of course, after I showed him how.
CONTRIVED EXPERIENCES – in here, we make use of a representative
models or muck up of reality for practical reasons and so that we can make the
real-life accessible to the students’ perception and understanding. For instance
a mock up of Apollo, the capsule for the exploration of the moon, enable the
North America Aviation Co. to study the problem of the lunar flight.
Remember how you were thought to
tell time? Your teacher may have used a mock up, a clock, whose hands you could
turn to set the time you were instructed to set. Simulations such as playing
“sari-sari” store to teach subtracting centavos from peso is another example of
contrive experience. Conducting election of class and school offers by simulating
how local and national elections are conducted is one or more example of
contrived experience.
DRAMATIZED EXPERIENCE – by dramatization, we can participate in
reconstructed experience, even though the original event is far removed from us
in time. We relive the outbreak of the Philippine revolution by acting out the
role of the characters in a drama.
DEMONSTRATIONS – it is a visualized explanation of an important
fact, idea or process by the use of photographs, drawings, films, displays, or
guided motions. It is showing how things are done. A teacher in Physical
education shows the class how to dance tango.
STUDY STRIPS – these are excursions, educational trips, and visits
conducted to observe an event that is unavailable within the classroom.
EXHIBITS – these are displays to be seen by spectators. They may
consist of working models arranged meaningfully or photographs with models,
charts, and posters. Sometimes exhibits are “for your eyes only”. There are
some exhibits, however, that include sensory experiences where spectators are
allowed to touch or manipulate models displayed.
TELEVISION AND MOTION PIUCTURES – television and motion pictures
can reconstruct the reality of the past so effectively that we are made to feel
that we are there. The unique value of the messages communicated by film and
television lies in their feeling of realism, their emphasis on person and
personality, their organized presentation, and their ability to select,
dramatize, highlight, and clarify.
STILL PICTURES, RECORDINGS, RADIO – these are visual and auditory
devices which may be used by an individual or a group. Still pictures lack the
sound and motion of a sound film. The radio broadcast of an actual event may
often be likened to a televised broadcast minus its visual dimension.
VISUAL SYMBOLS – there are no longer realistic reproduction or
physical things for these are highly abstract representations. Examples are
charts, graphs, maps and diagrams.
VERBAL SYMBOLS – they are not like the
objects or ideas for which they stand. They usually do not contain visual clues
to their meaning. Written words fall under this category. It may be a word for
a concrete object (book), an idea (freedom of speech), a scientific principle
(the principle of balance), a formula (e=mc2).
What are the
implications of the Cone of Experience in the teaching-learning process?
1.
We do not use only one medium of communication
in isolation. Rather we use many instructional materials to help the learner
conceptualize his/her experience.
2.
We avoid teaching directly at the symbolic level
of thought without adequate foundation of the concrete. Learners’ concepts will
lack deep roots in direct experience. Dale cautions us when he said: “These
rootless experiences will not have the generative power to produce additional
concepts and will not enable the learner to deal with the new situations that
he faces” (Dale, 1969).
3.
When teaching, we don’t get stuck in the
concrete. Let us strive to bring our students to the symbolic or abstract level
to develop their higher order thinking skills.
