Principles of Learning

Every aspect of our programmes is designed to deliver a totally integrated experience, unlike anything else in the world.

All our programmes have been professionally developed to be stimulating, totally personalised and hugely rewarding.

You select the elements that best fit with your strengths, your needs and your aspirations. If you have any special requests or areas of interest you would like to investigate or study, we will do our utmost to arrange them for you.

Assumptions

• Learning is part of life and life involves learning – they are intertwined.
• There is no learning without action and no responsible action without learning.
• Learning processes are consistent across Via.

Principles

• We learn best in small groups and where the learning is personalised for the learner.
• We learn by doing.
• We learn more when we are having fun.
• We learn best when we can constructively give and receive feedback.
• We learn by reflecting on our experiences, both individually and as teams.
• We learn by changing our individual and collective behaviour for the better, based on our reflections.
• We learn by sharing our experiences, reflections and new ways of doing things with others – with an open mind.
• We are aware of the impact of positional and personal power on the process of learning.
• We use all forms of power appropriately.
• We embrace diversity and respect its power.
• We believe in the power of positive visualisation.
• We see a learning opportunity in everything we do and experience.
• We accept full responsibility for our actions and accept we have full control over our decisions.

The Experiential Approach

Learning from real life experience is the driving philosophy behind our personal development programmes.

We draw on real life and realistic simulated challenges to build competence, knowledge and performance.

The Experiential Approach helps you to translate these experiences into meaningful, relevant learning that you will continue to benefit from throughout every aspect of your life.

The Experiential Approach has four steps:

Experience: from either real life or a simulated experience.

Reflection: shared observation and interpretation of the experience.

Processing: by analysing the experience in relation to conceptual models and real life situations.

Application: planning and committing to improvement in behaviours.