PowerPoint Presentation - For the Record: The Misinterpretation of Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience

Possible Misconceptions about the Cone2

Q Does the Cone device mean that all teaching and learning must move systematically from base to pinnacle?
A Emphatically no. As we have noted, young children use many simple abstractions-verbal symbols. Before entering school they have mastered the meanings of at least 2500 words, or verbal symbols, each one of which is an abstraction. The fact that something is an abstraction does not necessarily make it difficult to understand. Actually, there are wide variations in degree of difficulty.

2From Dale, 1969, p. 128