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Alan Mumford has been responsible for developing some of the most important work on learning and management training in the late 1980s and 1990s, and has developed a theory that there are four distinct approaches to learning from experience. Experiential learning is a central part of the development of people ‘on-the-job’. If the manner in which people learn is understood, then an organization can tailor training/development activities to meet individual needs.
Working alongside Peter Honey and Graham Robinson, Mumford undertook a project with 21 directors in 15 organizations in the UK,[1] interviewing them about their experiences and their capacity to learn from them to the benefit of the organization. They identified four approaches to learning from experience:
- the intuitive approach
- the incidental approach
- the retrospective approach
- the prospective approach
The research had initially suggested only two approaches to experiential learning: the prospective approach and the retrospective approach, but Mumford recognized the existence of the intuitive and incidental approaches as variations on the experiential learning process.
The Intuitive Approach
This approach involves learning unconsciously through experience. Intuitive learners believe that learning is simply a consequence of having experiences. They find it difficult, and even unnecessary, to articulate what or how they learned, content with their understanding that learning is an osmotic process. Intuitive learners therefore find the formal process of learning difficult to approach.
The Incidental Approach
Incidental learners approach learning as a process that occurs by chance. Activities will often provide a trigger for learning through post-mortem. Often, the trigger is a mistake or problem in their work. Incidental learners will then take an informal, unstructured approach to learning from the experience.
The Retrospective Approach
As the name suggests, this approach involves learning from an experience by looking back over it. Retrospective learners take three steps to learning. First, they have an experience that triggers the learning. Second, they review the experience, and third, they reach a conclusion about it. Retrospective learners learn from a diverse range of situations, as they have the ability to reflect on everything that they do, whether it is a routine or unusual task.
The Prospective Approach
With this approach, future experiences are viewed as opportunities to learn. Prospective learners plan what they will learn beforehand, and as with retrospective learners, they review the experience afterwards and reach conclusions that they can use when planning the next experience. Prospective learners believe that they learn because they enter a situation having planned to learn.
The prospective approach is regarded by many as the most powerful of the four types of experiential learning, as it best serves the aims of planned, continuous development, and fits neatly into the model of the learning cycle. However, the other approaches can also provide valuable, informal ways of learning through doing.
References[1] See Alan Mumford, Peter Honey and Graham Robinson, Directors’ Development Guidebook: Making Experiences Count (Training Agency/Institute of Directors Manual, 1989).
