Exploring and Enhancing Experiential Teaching and Learning in Social Justice-Oriented Education

Experiential education is a unique approach to teaching which can enhance student learning, engagement with material, and understanding of real-world situations. It particularly has potential to strengthen education in the social sciences, such as courses focused on topics related to social justice. This SaPP project aimed to explore experiential education in more detail in the literature and to map existing models of experiential education in disciplines related to social justice to identify ways to integrate experiential education more into SOCI 2170: Foundations in Social Justice, an undergraduate sociology course at Carleton University. The literature review conducted revealed service learning, problem-based learning, land-based learning, and place-based education as four key types of experiential education. The review of public course syllabi uncovered many samples of experiential education used in similar courses at other institutions. These literature findings and applicable real-world examples provide a strong foundation to improve experiential learning in SOCI 2170 for future years.