Learning, I suggest, is action and reflection. (And instruction should be designed action and guided reflection.) What that action typically ends up being is some sort of exploration (aka experimentation). Thus, in my mind, exploration is a critical concept for learning. That makes it worth exploring exploration.
In learning, we must experiment (e.g. act) and observe and reflect on the outcomes. We learn to minimize surprise, but we also act to generate surprise. I stipulate that we do so when the costs of getting it wrong are low. That is, making learning safe. So providing a safe sandbox for exploration is a support for learning. Similarly, have low consequences for mistakes generated through informal learning.
However, our explorations aren’t necessarily efficient nor effective. Empirically, we can make ineffective choices such as changing more than one variable at a time, or missing an area of exploration completely. For instruction, then, we need support. Many years ago, Wallace Feurzig argued for guided exploration, as opposed to free search (the straw man used to discount constructivist approaches). So putting constraints on the task and/or the environment can support making exploration more effective.
Exploration also drives informal learning. Diversity on a team, properly managed, increases the likelihood of searching a broader space of solutions than otherwise. There are practices that increase the effectiveness of the search. Similarly, exploration should be focused on answering questions. We also want serendipity, but there should be guidelines that keep the consequences under control.
By making exploration safe and appropriately constrained, we can advance our understanding most rapidly, either helping some folks learn what others know, or advance what we all know. Exploration is a key to learning, and we need to understand it. Thus, we should also keep exploring exploration!
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