Experiential learning cycle

This sense of working from the margins within a feminist action research framework also fits within different models of experiential learning. (Kolb, 1975; Hunt, 1987; McNiff,1988) The learning cycle can give us another way of understanding what it means to do research. As outlined on the next page, this project's research design can be broken down into four quarters. Beginning at the active experimentation stage, we had an opportunity to use our past experience to plan what might work as a woman-positive activity in our programs. Then, we had the concrete experience of doing the activity. By observing and reflecting on the activity and its consequences, we processed what happened. By documenting this process and our interpretation of the process, we moved into analysis. Developing recommendations began the cycle once again, providing guidelines for future experiences of woman-positive literacy work.

Although the experiential learning model provides a way to put the different parts of this research in order, actually doing the work was seldom this tidy. For one thing, our lives don't run on a single track. While we were reflecting on our woman-positive research, we might also have been doing several others things - experiencing a family crisis, analyzing ways to get more program funding, or experimenting with new ways of doing outreach for a political activity. Second, we all came into this project with a lifetime of experiences, reflections, interpretations, and analysis. We had already developed some understanding of how and why things might change our particular contexts.

Third, most of us have a flat spot in our learning and working styles. For example, some of us may be very good at planning new ways of doing things and then getting them done. But our ability to stand back and look at what happens from a variety of perspectives may not be quite so developed. Or, we may have little patience or skill for analyzing why things happen the way they do.

Going into this particular research, women needed to have a sense there was no "right" way to get the work done. Most of us would feel more engaged in some parts of the process than in others. Those who love to talk things through for hours might not want to spend time trying to understand why things happened the way they did. Or, they might shy away from having to come up with some practical solutions to problems they identified. Similarly, women who want to complete one task and get on with the next might feel impatient with women who seem to want to talk forever. For them, nothing seems to get accomplished. Some women feel threatened by confusion and a diversity of opinions. They want to know exactly what is happening and why. Others find the same situation exciting, allowing for the full expression of their creative abilities.