Gaining a “sense of place”: students’ affective experiences of place leading to transformative learning on international fieldwork

Abstract

This paper reveals the extent to which undergraduate students demonstrate transformative learning whilst on international fieldwork in Barcelona, Spain. Groups of students create a series of discrete active learning situations that allow them and their peers to engage more fully with their locale and in turn experience a deeper understanding of “place”. Reflective field trip notebooks are used to capture the experiences of students. Results show that through the use of the affective domain (Krathwohl’s taxonomy) and applying cyclic experiential learning (Kolb) combined with critical reflection (Mezirow), students demonstrate progression and, in some cases, regression along Krathwohl’s taxonomy.

Keywords:

• place
• affective domain
• experiential learning
• international fieldwork
• transformative learning
• Krathwohl

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, and the students that have participated in teaching their peers on the Barcelona field course over the years.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.