The master Experiential Expertise is meant for professionals who wish to take their experiential expertise a step further. During two years, students can discover how to sustainably implement experiential knowledge within organizations, how to creatively work on practice issues and how to manage a destigmatisation project. Students’ own experiences with disruption and recovery form the basis from which they work. With this master, experiential expertise is exported to other sectors besides care and welfare. The chosen research design is Participative Action Research (PAR), making it possible to learn, research and develop knowledge at the same time. This happens interprofessionally, together with fellow students from different domains. There is plenty of room for critical reflections and philosophical en theoretical questions concerning experiential knowledge.

The master revolves around three core tasks, with an emphasis on the second and third:

1. Supporting individual recovery processes
2. Organizing working processes which support recovery
3. Promoting emancipation, preventing stigma and creating societal opportunities

Students learn how to shape, manage and renew these core tasks in complex circumstances, while weighing practical, theoretical and ethical dilemma’s against each other. Three interlinked parts of the master entail:

• Knowledge and leading concepts: studying literature, watching knowledge clips and following classes
• Personal-professional development: coaching each other – with and without supervision – in small groups in processing new perspectives on experiential expertise
• Participative action research: learning how to work with PAR in one’s own practice

The master is meant for students with a minimal of three years work experience in a person-focused profession (care and welfare, education, management, economics and law, or sports), who have a bachelor’s degree. It is also important that students have experience with disruption and recovery and have a certificate proving their experiential expertise.

By Rosalie Metze, University of applied science Windesheim

My name is Nicole and I am a student in my final year of Social Work at the Hogeschool Utrecht University of applied sciences (HU). Last year I participated in the “Mend The Gap” course where I learned a lot of things in regards of working together on an equal footing with experience experts. Experiential knowledge is one of the most valuable forms of knowledge in my opinion and that’s why I think it is so important that we value the collaboration with experts by experience. I have experienced that working and learning together find such simple and valuable solutions in how we as students can make small adjustments for the better in our future work as a starting professional.

While I was working together with experts by experience, in my case the STERK-students, I found out that there were a few obstacles they encounter in their work which, at times, made it more difficult for them to fulfill their job at HU. My experiences had left me wondering about the way HU supports the experts by experience and if there is a way to improve guidance by aligning with the needs of them.
In my research I am going to take a closer look in how HU can support the experts by experience in the guidance and if there are any necessary requirements the school can commit to or improve. In order to improve collaboration with experts by experience and to ultimately deploy more of their knowledge in the education system.

The first insight from the interviews with the experts by experience showed me how much they appreciate working together alongside the teachers or coach. The collaboration shows to be really useful while preparing the lessons together with the teachers or coach. They can both set expectations towards each other which helps them out later when they are teaching in front of the class. The experts by experience know in advance what to expect from the class and perhaps where to complement each other best, one explains theory and the other complements it with an additional experience story. After class the expert by experience and teacher can discuss how it went, this is experienced as very useful and instructive. The equal cooperation is also emphasized as necessary by the experts by experience in the interviews I had with them. An outcome of the interviews is that the teachers and coach at HU do that really well which makes the experts by experience feel very welcome and free to indicate what they need within the collaboration. I think this is a big compliment for the teachers and coach at HU.

There are also some things the HU can work on in order to better the workspace and how to better support the expert by experience. I am planning to collect the results in a booklet where I write recommendations to share with HU in hope they can even better the collaboration with the experts by experience. The booklet will contain stories and tips which are gathered from the interviews. This will be done in June 2023.

Leonie (second from the left) among social work lecturers from Utrecht University of applied sciences

Experiential knowledge. How do we recognize it? Can you see it, feel it, taste it? What does it mean? How can you harness it and how do you develop it with students? With a diverse group of social work lecturers, we orientated ourselves to questions like these under the guidance of Windesheim colleague Leonie de Quelerij. Leonie is one of Windesheims representatives within the Erasmus plus project ‘Partnership experiential knowledge’, which focuses on knowledge exchange on integration of the knowledge source experiential knowledge in higher education.

Within this project, several bachelors and master’s in social work and nursing from different European countries exchange their knowledge and experience in integrating experiential knowledge into their education. Personal experiences of students regularly underpin the motivation of students to choose this study. And experiential knowledge as a resource is proving increasingly important to use as a professional in practice. Making contact from person to person, with good insight into one’s own experiences alongside theory and practice makes the professional even more meaningful to the person they support.

Windesheim has knowledge of, and experience in training teachers and (prospective) professionals around experiential knowledge. Learning from your own experience and that of others is crucial to the development of experiential knowledge. Allowing lecturers in particular go through this process and be more at ease with the source of experiential knowledge helps students to do the same and help them use this source of knowledge in a professional way. Going through that process together with colleagues and giving meaning to experiential knowledge together is also an important step in forming policy around integration of experiential knowledge in education, the partnership teaches us.

During the workshop, we focused on the theory and definition of experiential knowledge and the core values of experiential knowledge; Practical, Existential, Political-Critical, Personal, Ethical and Relational (PEPPER) (Weerman et al, 2021). By using some practical exercises, we learned together about experiential knowledge and from each other’s experiences. The practical methods can also be used in the classroom together with students to give meaning to experiences and develop experiential knowledge together Participant: “There is a lot of knowledge within the experiences of students and teachers that makes them authentic as professionals and we can value and use them more.”

Quote participant: “It was very nice and inspiring to exchange experiences and knowledge from experience with colleagues. Most important is that this breaks taboos and that we thereby make more room within the team for experiential knowledge and thus indirectly (and pe directly) also make more room for students’ experiential knowledge in our lessons.”

A lecturer working on the creative activity ‘antennae‘

What is next?
This spring, the workshop will be offered again for those interested and we will make the collected methods, workshops, trainings and approaches working with experiential knowledge available to lecturers. We are also looking into the possibility of offering training to lecturers who want to develop their own experiences into experiential knowledge and participants can search  whether they can and want to use this as a lecturer to guide students in their process. In addition, a group of social work lecturers, in collaboration with the Lectorate Participation, Care and Support, is working on a plan to further develop integration of experiential knowledge in our education.
Want to know more? Mail sascha.vangijzel@hu.nl