In 2009, Cedefop, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, issued European guidelines for the validation of informal learning, which was defined as ‘Learning resulting from daily activities related to work, family or leisure’. Such learning arises through experience and ‘takes place in the spaces surrounding activities and events with a more overt formal purpose, and takes place in a much wider variety of settings than formal education or training’. The developing practice in higher education which designs academic programmes to include experiential work-based learning supports the identification and recognition of experiential learning in the workplace and elsewhere. However, the recent surveys of academic practice relating to the integration of experiential work-based learning in the Business Administration subject areas in the UK reveal that there are tensions between the pedagogies adopted to support experiential learning and those used in more conventional programmes. Drawing on examples of practice revealed in the surveys, this chapter will explore the pedagogic tensions which arise when combining knowledge from the academic disciplines and from experiential learning in the same curriculum. It will be argued that emphasis on and commitment to academic disciplines as currently organised perpetuates the undervaluing of knowledge which is derived through direct experience and inhibits the wider and more effective recognition of experiential learning in higher education. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014.
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