Volume Two - Academic Conferences

3.3 Kolb’s theory of LSs (1984)
Fatemeh Orooji et al.
According to Kolb(Kolb, 1984), the learning cycle involves four essential processes which each
person needs to complete and its LS Inventory shows where he/she prefers to enter the learning
cycle (Hashim, 2003). The four-stage cycle consists of:
Concrete Experience (CE): being involved in a new experience
Reflective Observation (RO): watching others or developing observations about own experience
Abstract Conceptualization (AC): creating theories to explain observations
Active Experimentation (AE): using theories to solve problems make decisions
Figure 3: Kolb’s LSs
In this theory, there are four LSs –diverging, assimilating, converging and accommodatingdetermined
by the combinations of two preferred styles of perceiving and processing, for which Kolb
used the terms: Diverging (CE/RO), Assimilating (AC/RO), Converging (AC/AE), Accommodating
(CE/AE).
3.4 Felder- Silverman LS Model (1988)
They show how learners prefer to process, perceive, receive and understand, by using scales from
+11 to -11 for each dimension (including only odd values) which facilitate describing the LS
preferences in more detail (Felder and Silverman, 1988):
Figure 4: Our depiction of Felder- Silverman LS Model
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