Learning Experience: An Alternative Understanding Inspired by Thinking Through Confucius

Purpose: This article aims to provide an alternative understanding of learning experience in contrast to the dominant constructivist interpretation, and discuss its implication for pedagogy. Design/Approach/Methods: The aim is specifically achieved in the comparison between a review of how experience is understood in constructivism and its philosophical underpinnings and an exploration of how it can be understood alternatively inspired by Confucius’ educational thought and premised on his ontology. Drawing on this philosophical discussion, learning experience is reinterpreted. Findings: Beyond rationally translating experience into knowledge or gaining knowledge on the basis of experience, learning leads students to immediately and consistently experience dao in which tian and ren harmoniously unit. This experience renders aesthetics and religiousness in learning and moral transformation in life events. Originality/Value: By illustrating this ontological alternative of learning experience, this article is an attempt to fundamentally decolonize thinking about pedagogy.