ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to help experiential learning to move from a statement that something is happening and from a basic enumeration of what is happening, to an understanding and an interpretation of how it is happening. Experiential Learning and Outdoor Education is based on the outcomes of a three-year GACR project, which seeks to build a coherent philosophical base for the practice of experiential learning in the outdoors, with especial reference to Dewey, Dilthey and the phenomenological approach currently focused on Merleau-Ponty. Specific historical conditions and various political arrangements in the former Czechoslovakia –the Czech Republic – led to a distinctive version of experiential pedagogy which refers to the theoretical reflection of a specific educational practice originally pursued by the Vacation School of Lipnice. The chapter defines the field of experiential education and experiential pedagogy, briefly discusses its roots and development in the Czech Republic and finishes with the contemporary state of the field.
