Experiential Learning as Transformative: Teaching about Genocide and Crimes of the State

Abstract

The ‘applied nature’ of criminology, criminal justice and law courses lends itself to the use of experiential learning within programme delivery (George et al, 2015; Higgins et al, 2012). What is clear from the limited literature is that the use of experiential learning within criminal justice education has been focused on knowledge, skills, roles and identity of ‘the practitioner’. There is very little discussion of the value of experiential learning as transformative of the individual in terms of being able to critically reflect on the experience as a means to understand self and non-conformity to perceived hegemony (such as in the resistance to Nazis during the Second World War). Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1968) ‘Carnival’ and Mezirow’s (1991) Transformative Learning Theory this paper asks the question ‘Can experiential learning be truly transformative?’ It presents findings from narrative interviews with 20 undergraduate students studying Criminology, Psychology, Policing or Criminal Investigation who participated in a field trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau Camps. Interviews were undertaken pre and post field trip to examine students’ expectations of and reflections on the ‘experience’.