Skip to content

Cone of Experience (Concrete-to-Abstract Media Selection)

Theory · All theories
Evidence · 4 claims (2 for, 2 mixed) · 4 studies (2 causal, 1 design, 1 theoretical), q1–q3 · 1 of 4 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description

Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience (1946, revised 1969) organizes instructional media and methods along a continuum of concreteness: direct, purposeful experience ("seen, handled, tasted, touched, felt, and smelled") at the broad base, moving up through observed and mediated experience (demonstrations, dramatized experience, exhibits, field trips, motion pictures), to highly abstract verbal and visual symbols at the narrow top (Lee & Reeves, 2018). Dale later mapped Bruner's three modes of representation onto the Cone: enactive (learning by doing), iconic (learning through observation), and symbolic (learning through abstraction). Dale explicitly called the Cone a "visual analogy" for the progression of experience, not a prescription that concrete media are always superior or that instruction should be sequenced strictly bottom-to-top.

The Cone is one of the most widely misapplied models in instructional design. It is frequently confused with the "Remembering Cone" or "Bogus Cone" — the claim that learners retain 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, and so on up to 90% of what they say and do. Dale never made this claim, never attached retention percentages to any level of the Cone, and the "evidence" for the Remembering Cone appears to have been fabricated by petroleum-industry trainers in the 1960s (Molenda, 2003; Subramony, 2003). Any citation of specific retention percentages attributed to Dale should be treated as evidence of the myth, not the actual model.

Dale's own guidance was for balance, not maximization of concreteness: "Too much reliance on concrete experience may actually obstruct the process of meaningful generalization" (Dale, 1969, p. 130), and providing fully realistic experience is not always efficient in terms of cost, time, and effort. The Cone's real contribution was linking media selection to a psychological theory of abstraction (Seels, 1997), influencing later, more rigorous media-selection frameworks (e.g., Briggs, 1972) that account for learner age, learner type, and task type.

Implications

Context

Requirements

  • A genuine need to choose among media/methods of varying concreteness for a given content and audience, rather than a single fixed medium mandated in advance

Constraints

  • Do not cite specific retention percentages ("people remember 10% of what they read...") as coming from Dale — this is the debunked "Bogus Cone," not his actual model, and its use as decision-support is not evidence-based
  • The Cone is descriptive/organizing, not prescriptive: it does not tell a designer which specific level is correct for a given objective, only that concreteness and abstraction trade off
  • For young children especially, real and concrete experience provides a necessary foundation, but even here, over-reliance on concrete experience can obstruct meaningful generalization to the abstract concept being taught

Target Learners

  • Younger or novice learners typically benefit more from concrete, direct, or iconic (observed) experience as a foundation before abstraction
  • All learners benefit from balanced combinations rather than experience concentrated at one extreme of the continuum

Target Learning Objectives

  • Concept and generalization formation, which requires eventual movement toward abstraction even when direct experience provides the initial foundation
  • Vicarious experience of things learners cannot directly encounter (Dale argued audiovisual materials extend the range of vicarious experience "regardless of the limitations of time and space")

Theory

Contradicting / Qualifying

  • The "Remembering Cone" / "Bogus Cone" retention-percentage claim is not part of Dale's actual model and has no credible evidentiary basis (Molenda, 2003; Subramony, 2003) — a claim frequently, incorrectly attributed to this principle

Claims

  • User-Centered Design for Learning — both concern deliberate choice of instructional medium, though this principle addresses concreteness/abstraction rather than interface usability

Examples

  • Combining a hands-on lab (direct experience) with a follow-up abstract discussion of the underlying principle, rather than relying on either alone
  • Using video or simulation (iconic/mediated experience) to bring inaccessible phenomena (historical events, microscopic processes) into a classroom as vicarious experience

Key Sources

  • Lee, S. J., & Reeves, T. C. (2018). Edgar Dale and the cone of experience. In R. West (Ed.), Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/edgar_dale
  • Dale, E. (1969). Audiovisual methods in teaching (3rd ed.). Dryden Press.
  • Subramony, D. P. (2003). Dale's cone revisited: Critically examining the misapplication of a nebulous theory to guide practice. Educational Technology, 43(4), 25–30.
  • Molenda, M. (2003). Cone of experience. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.), Education and Technology: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO.
Page metadata
Field Value
type theory
id cone-of-experience
title Cone of Experience (Concrete-to-Abstract Media Selection)
description Dale's Cone of Experience arranges learning experiences along a continuum from concrete, direct experience to abstract, symbolic (verbal) experience, as guidance for balancing — not ranking — media and instructional method choices.
status review
canonical True
generated by claude/unspecified on 2026-08-29
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.