Experimental Learning: A Basic Form of Industrial-Technical Vocational Education and Training

Colloquially, “experimenting” refers to an extensive spectrum of human activities, ranging from thought experiments to trying out experiments, practicing experiments to experimenting problem-solving and constructing. Selected examples are used to illustrate different forms of experimentation: experimentation in the process of cognitive activity, experimental trial and error, experimentation as optimization of movement coordination, and scientific versus technical experimentation. Experimentation is a basic form of human activity that is “responsible” for the fact that the protracted process of social accumulation of experience and of gaining knowledge, as initially given with the ability to produce tools (producing activity), could be significantly accelerated. For the development of the experimental model in vocational education, it is important to avoid the narrowness of purposive didactic action by making technology design a field of experimentation and experimental learning in a comprehensive sense.