An Analysis of the Methodological Techniques of Published Work in the Field of Experiential Education

This article’s main theme is an analysis of accessible published degree work and contributions in education journals with a focus on what is known as “experiential education”. We start by introducing the concept of experiential education and trying to define it. We then turn to the analysis of student degree work (masters, doctoral examination work and dissertations) and look specifically at the methodology and particular research tools used. Together with the qualification work we analyse articles published in selected Czech educational journals – Pedagogika, e-Pedagogium, Pedagogická orientace, Gymnasion – likewise with a focus on experiential pedagogy. Our aim is to analyse the methodological techniques exploited in Czech experiential education as presented in the student degree work and in the articles.
Overall we analysed 1,088 student works, 107 of which met the criteria that we had chosen and related to the field of experiential pedagogy. Of these 76 were empirical in research character. Because the overwhelming majority of these works used their own questionnaires or survey questions as research tools, and also interviews and observation, this methodology has only minimal potential for future studies in the field of experiential education. 7 authors used standardized tools for their research. We list these in the text.
We analysed a total of 336 articles from the selected educational journals, and of these only 6 met our chosen criteria and related to “experiential education”. None of them contained empirical research, and so there was no methodology or research instrument. Unlike in the case of the student qualification works we registered no increased interest yet in the theme in the educational journals.