Does the participatory and experiential approach of "Rethinking our Classrooms" really work?

According to the article we read in class, participatory and experiential practices are put into place in a "rethought" classroom and integrated into the lesson plans. The benefits of this approach is that students will get first hand experience and therefore better understand the material. As a student myself I know I am a more hands on learner than a student who learns from lectures or reading. When you just hear facts read to you or when you read about them yourself, there is a factor missing, the life factor. It does not seem real to you because you cannot connect to the realities of everyday life. Participatory and experiential lessons do this though, they bring the curriculum to life and students like me understand it better. There are many ways of doing this such as role plays, projects, simulations, mock trials, experiments, and much more. According to http://www.rethinkingschools.org/about/index.shtml, the main goal of this reform is to get away from the banking concept of memorization, textbook domination, and standardized testing and bring it home for the students. Make the curriculum apply to their lives, to the real world, so that they, the students, better understand it.http://www.trainingforchange.org/direct_education is another website that advocates the direct education approach and the participatory/experiential lessons method. What they really advocate is group-centered workshops that focus on diversity.

In my opinion, participatory lessons would benefit all students because almost every learning style is compatible with this approach.