Grappling with Modes of Experience

Phenomenology offers experience as a means of analysis, a way of seeing and understanding the world through the body and its interactions. Phenomenology, or the study of lived experience as it is lived and experienced, is not just a stuffy philosophical stance. When adopted as a frame or lens, phenomenology can enliven and re-engage our ability to grasp our everyday experiences in a new way. An application of phenomenology to education invites teachers to teach through experience. As teachers and educators we can cultivate a new way of being in our students by engaging their minds and bodies together through carefully crafted lifeworlds in our classrooms or, better yet, in the field. 

John Dewey certainly had a lot to say about experience and education. What counts as an experience, though? Is it only our direct experience? Can we also have a phenomenological impact on our students by sharing our own experiences? What about sharing someone else’s experience through our teaching? Can a student experience something secondhand, without actually physically being in that experience? 

This is an area we’re grappling with at the PEXE Lab. What does it mean to have a first, second, or third hand experience?

Fungus Among Us

I’ll (Sean) share an anecdote from my days teaching 8th grade science. I had a student we’ll call Samantha who was showing an early interest in ecology. Though Samantha was not an outdoorsy kid, she wanted to be but simply didn’t have opportunities to do so. In class, we worked through different domains of life and began talking about fungus, which is now considered its own kingdom. I shared stories of people foraging, of mushrooms that grow in my backyard, and our nearby mushroom capital of the world, Kennet Square. 

Fungus was fascinating for this student. She was so curious about decomposition and mycorrhizal networks. The idea of Oregon’s Humongous Fungus, a 3.7 square mile singular living organism, was an unbelievable story for her until we watched a short news clip interviewing a mycologist and showing video and images of the fungus. 

Fungus deeply captivated Samantha’s life. It was core to her being - down to the mushroom keychains she eventually got for her backpack. And yet, somewhat shockingly, she had never seen a mushroom firsthand before. Mushrooms weren’t eaten in her home, she had never really spent significant time in nature, and mushrooms weren’t something that existed in her daily experience, until now. Samantha’s identity was being formed by something she had never actually experienced herself. 

Modes of Experience

Is it possible that Samantha’s nexus, her web of experiences directly connected to her identity, was impacted by the re-telling of my experience with fungus and the shared narrative of the mycologist in Oregon? That certainly seems to be the case. 

This question of experience begins with an inquiry into what modes of experience might be possible. We are currently using the heuristic of first, second, and thirdhand experiences to help us think and reflect on these different kinds of experiences.

In short: 

• Firsthand experiences are direct, embodied, sensory-rich, and in the moment. They are concrete and require direct participation in an experience.

• Secondhand experiences are mediated. They are a retelling of experience via one who has experienced. Think of stories or designed representations of an experience that come directly from the experiencer. They are retold as concretely as possible, but become more abstract in their interpretation. Secondhand experiences are one step removed from firsthand.

• Thirdhand experiences are abstracted knowledge, a retelling of a retelling. Think of textbooks and summaries, telling another experiencer’s story in the words of a secondhand experiencer’s interpretation. At this point, you are getting an abstract interpretation of a story retold to you.  

Experience is layered, not ranked

Some might be quick to jump to the idea of a firsthand experience being “the best.” I’ll ask you to hold that thought and push back. It may seem that way, but what matters most in an experience is how it resonates, transforms, or invites the experiencer. Can you think of ways a secondhand or thirdhand experience might perform better for a student? What about a dangerous situation, like cave diving. Would a cave diving field trip with inexperienced 12 year olds have the same positive effect as listening to an experienced cave diver tell stories about what they’ve seen, felt, and sensed? These are the questions we are beginning to ask. 

The Grappling

Over the next few weeks we’re going to explore first, second, and thirdhand experiences more deeply as we begin to untangle this web. There is a phenomenological nuance here. For one, what is the difference between Samantha’s firsthand experience of being in my classroom learning about fungus and Samantha’s secondhand experience of fungus through my stories? Is there a difference? What about a memoir? Fiction vs non-fiction stories? Virtual reality? These questions and more are at the forefront of our research. Our guiding question, throughout all of our projects, is: What is a student’s experiencing-of-the-world? With this foundation, we can explore these modes of experiencing even further. 

Going Deeper: Psychological Distance

Another leading edge of our thinking is the connection between experience and psychological distance. Construal-level Theory, a framework from psychology developed by Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman, tells us that the further something feels psychologically, the more abstract it is internally understood and interpreted. If we can identify a firsthand experience as the psychologically closest mode of experience, does that automatically make it the most concrete? Does that make thirdhand experience the most abstract? What does this mean for how we layer stories in teaching? Psychological distance and construal-level are key to understanding experiential education, mechanically, and you can look forward to more writing on this soon. 

The Mycorrhizal Network of Experiences

Excuse the fungus puns. Our hunch here is that teaching is a weaving of experiences, a tapestry created from a web of first, second, and thirdhand experiences that our students live and participate in. If we can glimpse our student’s sense of experiencing-of-the-world, then we can gauge their growth and build their being. Further, if we can design our teaching to be experiential, not mechanically but philosophically, we can invite our students to live in those experiences and become fully immersed. 

For every story told in the classroom, there is a Samantha ready to fully dive in. How we weave the network of experiences is key to our pedagogy as teachers and as guides. 

This is part 1 of a series on First, Second, and Thirdhand Experience. Look for Part 2, one firsthand experience, next week. Please feel free to subscribe using the form on the footer of this page. We’re working to build a contact list for future newsletters and updates.