Lesson 5

                                     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.