The Meaning of Learning on the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage - Study Findings and Learning Experience Insights

Oct 15, 2026

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The paper investigates how Korean travellers on the Camino de Santiago experience learning through their lived travel. Eight participants were studied using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to identify patterns in time, space, body, and human relations during the pilgrimage. Results summarize four existential aspects into “slow and composure,” “meditation and spirituality,” “companionship,” and “the dance of self-mortification through physical pain.” The experience also holds deep learning significance via biographical learning, autopoiesis theory, and spiritual learning.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

The Camino de Santiago

Study Purpose and Method

Findings: Four Existentials and Learning Meanings

Australian Journal of Adult Learning Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015 The meaning of learning on the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage Kyung-Mi Im Howon University, Korea JuSung Jun Soongsil University, Korea The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of travellers on the Camino de Santiago in order to find out the pattern of their travel lived experience and the meaning of learning experience. For this purpose, eight Korean travellers were selected for the study; the study was performed using the hermeneutic phenomenological method. The findings are as follows: First, the pattern of lived experience-’the four Existentials, lived time, space, body and human relation’-on the Camino de Santiago was summarized into ‘slow and composure’,‘meditation and spirituality’,‘companionship’, and‘the dance of self-mortification through physical pain’ in the four existential aspects of time, space, relationship, and body. Second, the lived experience of participants had profound meaning as a learning experience in terms of biographical learning, the theory of autopoiesis, and spiritual learning. Keywords: Learning experience, Lived experience, Four Existentials, The Camino de Santiago 332 Kyung-Mi Im and JuSung Jun Introduction This study explores the lived experience of travellers on the Camino de Santiago in order to find out the pattern of their travel lived experience and the meaning of learning experience. Travel has been an important learning tool for those in search of ‘oneself’ throughout the history of humankind. Travel is not just a simple voyage, but consists of learning experiences that involve transformative learning. Travel is chosen by oneself, and all activities in the journey are self-directed, thus making it a self-directed reflection. Today, travel allows the modern people to become ‘time-machines’ in the busy daily grind to take a step away from the complicated world of reality and to take some time to look back on life without any time restriction. John Locke says that the last step of education is travel and travel completes an individual as a gentleman (Goh, 2005) . Also, Lindstrom (2011) has discovered that travellers‘eliminate individual prejudices, awaken the sentimentality, develop confidence and independence, and undergo the examination to discover their true selves, the trust in others, and the behavior-oriented approach for individual change’(p. 228), after the travel experience. Travel leads to the experience of nature, freedom, and philosophy of self-esteem. Hence, travel has various meanings in terms of education/learning. The Camino de Santiago is a trail for travel on foot. While people are walking, they observe and investigate local architectures, language, culture, attitude of people, etc. It seems as if they are an amateur anthropologist. The Camino de Santiago is the way of the gospel walked by James the Apostle. The Camino de Santiago itself is a spiritual way and a way of self-mortification that engenders physical and spiritual pain while walking for more than a month. Nevertheless, many people have gone on this route of self-mortification in the past. It is because this way leads to the unknown world and is the way of experience of life that offers them the feelings of loneliness, longing, warmth, rumination of regrets, recovery, consolation, and self-discovery. For many participants, the Camino de Santiago leads to maturation. Furthermore, various people pursue communication and coexistence, reconciliation, and sharing for national and international peace on the journey. The Camino de Santiago brings various learning experiences and discovery of oneself. For these reasons, there have been studies on the The Meaning of Learning on the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage 333 travel experiences on the Camino de Santiago (Gower, 2002; Hames, 2008; Katsilometes, 2010; Sawicki, 2009) However, these studies were primarily focused on the spiritual and psychological aspects a

FAQs

What was the purpose of the study on Camino de Santiago travellers?

To explore travellers’ lived experiences on the Camino de Santiago and to identify patterns and meanings of their learning experiences.

How was the study conducted and who were the participants?

Eight Korean travellers were selected and the study used a hermeneutic phenomenological method.

What learning pattern did the study find across the four existential aspects?

It summarized lived experiences into four themes: “slow and composure,” “meditation and spirituality,” “companionship,” and “the dance of self-mortification through physical pain,” mapped to time, space, relationship, and body.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by McGucket