Cone of Experience (Lesson 5)

            Experience is our best teacher. According to one of the principles in the selection and use of teaching strategies, the more senses that are involved in learning, the more and the better the learning will be but it does not mean that concrete experience is the only effective experience that educators should use in transferring knowledge to the learner.

        The cone of experience that introduce by Edgar Dale, states that it is a visual representation that bands of experiences arranged according to the degree of abstraction and not the degree of difficulty. There are eleven (11) stages starting from concrete experiences at the bottom of the cone then it becomes more and more abstract as it reach the peak of the cone. Also, according to Dale, the arrangement in the cone is not based on its difficulty but rather based on abstraction and on the number of senses involved. The experiences in each stages can be mixed and are interrelated that fosters more meaningful learning. According also to Jerome S. Bruner a Harvard psychologist, he presented his three-tiered model of learning and he points out that every area of knowledge can be presented and learned in three distinct steps namely, Enactive, Iconic, symbolic. 

         The Cone of experience simply means that we can learn through the use of our senses and more on experiences in life because as they said, experience is our best teacher.