The bigger picture : experiential learning from the classroom to the organization

Case studies of experiential learning scenarios inside (and outside) the translator education classroom investigate the learning effects on students involved and/or present models of the way that students learn. However, the effects on other actors, like the educators and the organizations they work for, are only rarely addressed in translation pedagogy literature. This chapter sketches out the bigger picture in which student learning is situated. In particular, it explores the scalable dimension of experiential learning, from the individual actors right up to the organizations, and even the communities, they work for and in. It considers how it and action research can be combined to drive fractal, multi-level learning at translator education institutions as a key operational element in a broader self-sustaining organizational learning programme. It suggests that an emergentist learning model can provide the coherent framework needed to integrate all levels of organizational learning and development, which can then be implemented according to programmes adapted and localized for specific institutional contexts of need. Only an integrated approach of this sort can close the potentially widening divide between the ambitions of translator education institutions to educate for rapidly evolving translation professions and their ability to do so