Reflection and an Appetite for Experience: Theory to Classroom Practice

Experience is openness to possibilities for seeing the world, one's place in it, and one's relation to the things that matter in that world. It is a process of questioning. It holds the potential for communion with others, and it promises to transform those who diligently engage in it. Investigating the nature of experi ence constitutes the heart of Hans-Georg Gadamer ' s ( 1 990) text, Truth and Method. Gadamer ( 1 990) explains: Experience stands in an ineluctable opposition to knowledge and to the kind of i nstruction that follows from general theoretical or technical knowledge. The truth of experience always implies an orientation toward new experience.... The consummation of his experience, the perfection that we call "being experienced, " does not consist in the fact that someone already knows everything and knows better than anyone else. Rather, the experienced person proves to be, on the contrary, someone who is radically undogmatic; who, because of the many experiences he has had and the knowledge he has drawn from them, is particularly well equipped to have ne