Field trips as short-term experiential education

Headnote

FIELD TRIPS AS SHORT-TERM EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION*

EDUCATIONAL REFORMER AND PHILOSOPHER John Dewey once wrote that "education is life" ([ 1973] 1981:450), that what students learn and the way they learn it should be rooted in society and in social experiences. No approach to teaching makes the education-lifesociety connection clearer than experiential education (DeMartini 1983), a cause that Dewey championed. Most commonly, experiential education in sociology is found under the rubric "applied sociology," entailing a somewhat lengthy and involved workoriented relationship with an organization, the end product of which is personal development (Kolb 1984). Others define the concept less rigorously as "learning in which the learner is directly in touch with the realities being studied" (Keeton and Tate 1978:2; emphasis in original).

Field trips may best be seen as an example of short-term experiential education. Within the sociological literature, as with most other disciplines, field trips largely have been ignored. For instance, in Campbell, Blalock, and McGee's edited volume Teaching Sociology (1985), the teaching techniques discussed are exclusively classroom and text-based. In a review of 14 of the 51 articles published in this journal from its inception to 1994 pertaining to applied sociology, experiential learning, and internships1, only three mentioned field trips or analogous terms. Brooks (1980:431) made a passing note of the value of field trips, and Chow, Hemple, and Hemple (1988) mentioned instructor-supervised "site visits" (p. 9).

In their 1981 paper on experiential learning for large classes, Grant et al. presented several guidelines for conducting field trips (1981:20-25); while helpful, these were not exhaustive. More recently, Catherine E. Boyle (1995) wrote of a "field trip to the mall" that she uses to teach gender stratification in her introductory sociology classes.2

Field trips deserve more attention from sociologists. Many instructors eagerly embrace technological tools, including electronic media of all kinds, that promise to bring the world to their students. In the process, however, students are merely exposed to a mediated portrayal of society/ societies and social issues. Field trips offer the sort of enriching experiences that Dewey recognized as so central to successful educational endeavors because they are experiences, lived social events that become ways of knowing.

Below, I address how field trips may be helpful in a range of sociology classes, using as...