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Table 19 Jackson’s Learning Styles Profiler (LSP) General Strengths The LSP is a sophisticated instrument in terms of its theory base and computerised format. Designed for use in business and education. Weaknesses Design of the model The model describes four styles: Initiator, Analyst, Reasoner and Implementer. It is possible that the style names chosen by Jackson are not good descriptors of the underlying constructs. Reliability The test–retest reliability of three scales is satisfactory. The Reasoner scale has poor test–retest reliability. Validity The authors claim factorial validity on the basis of a four-factor solution. Some evidence of concurrent validity is provided by correlations with other measures of personality. Some further refinement of items is needed, especially in the Iinitiator scale. Implications for pedagogy There is a positive emphasis in the computer-generated recommendations for personal development which result from completing the questionnaire. The feedback is very detailed and contains suggestions for building on strengths, dealing with challenging situations and remedying maladaptive learning. It is desirable, both for individuals and organisations, to build up multiple strengths rather than for people to work only in ways which come most naturally to them. Evidence of pedagogical impact The relevance, practicality and value of the personal feedback have yet to be evaluated. Overall assessment Key source The theoretical model and the LSP, for which UK norms exist, have promise for wider use and consequential refinement in organisational and educational contexts. Jackson 2002
Section 6 Flexibly stable learning preferences LSRC reference page 60/61 Introduction One of the most influential models of learning styles was developed by David Kolb in the early 1970s. His theory of experiential learning and the instrument which he devised to test the theory – the Learning Style Inventory (LSI) – have generated a very considerable body of research. The starting point was his dissatisfaction with traditional methods of teaching management students, which led him to experiment with experiential teaching methods. He then observed that some students had definite preferences for some activities (eg exercises), but not others (eg formal lectures): ‘From this emerged the idea of an inventory that would identify these preferences by capturing individual learning differences’ (Kolb 2000, 8). For Kolb and for those who have followed in his tradition, a learning style is not a fixed trait, but ‘a differential preference for learning, which changes slightly from situation to situation. At the same time, there is some long-term stability in learning style’ (2000, 8). Kolb goes so far as to claim that the scores derived from the LSI are stable over very long periods; for example, the learning style of a 60 year old will bear a close resemblance to that individual’s learning style when he or she was an undergraduate of 20. It is, however, difficult to accept this claim when the necessary longitudinal research has still to be carried out. Be that as it may, Kolb’s four dominant learning styles – diverging, assimilating, converging and accommodating, each located in a different quadrant of the cycle of learning – have been enormously influential in education, medicine and management training. Here it is more relevant to see Kolb as the main inspiration for large numbers of theorists and practitioners who have used his original ideas to generate their own questionnaires and teaching methods. For example, Honey and Mumford (2000) make explicit their intellectual debt to Kolb’s theory, although they also make it clear that they produced their own Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) because they found that Kolb’s LSI had low face validity with managers. They also made changes to Kolb’s nomenclature by substituting reflector, theorist, pragmatist and activist for Kolb’s rather more unwieldy terms: reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, active experimentation and concrete experience. But as De Ciantis and Kirton (1996, 810) have pointed out: ‘the descriptions [of the four styles] they represent are, by design, essentially Kolb’s’. Honey and Mumford (2000) also give pride of place in their model to the learning cycle, which for them provides an ideal structure for reviewing experience, learning lessons and planning improvements. For Honey (2002, 116), the learning cycle is: flexible and helps people to see how they can enter the cycle at any stage with information to ponder, with a hypothesis to test, with a plan in search of an opportunity to implement it, with a technique to experiment with and see how well it works out in practice. In the US, McCarthy (1990) has developed a detailed method of instruction called 4MAT, which is explicitly based on Kolb’s theory of the cycle of learning, and which is receiving support from increasing numbers of US practitioners. We describe and evaluate 4MAT in Coffield et al. 2004 (Section 4) when discussing learning styles and pedagogy (see also Section 8 and Figure 13 of this report). In much the same way as Honey and Mumford were inspired by Kolb’s pioneering work, Allison and Hayes (1996) latched onto two notions (‘action’ and ‘analysis’) in Honey and Mumford’s LSQ when they were devising their own Cognitive Style Index (CSI). For Allinson and Hayes, style is defined as an individual’s characteristic and consistent approach to processing information, but they readily admit that a person’s style can be influenced by culture, experience or a particular context. At first reading, it may appear that Allinson and Hayes’ fundamental dimension of style is brain-based, with action being characteristic of right-brain orientation, and analysis being characteristic of left-brain orientation. Their claim, however, is not substantiated by any research and so, in our view, Allinson and Hayes are more appropriately placed within the Kolbian ‘family’ of learning theorists. 6.1 Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (LSI) Introduction David Kolb, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in the US, is widely credited with launching the modern learning styles movement in 1984 with the publication of Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. That book summarised 17 years of research into the theory of experiential learning and its applications to education, work and adult development. Kolb describes in this text how the LSI was created to assess individual orientations towards learning; and, because the LSI grew out of his theory of experiential learning, it is necessary to understand that theory and the place of the LSI within it. It has proved to be a highly productive approach as can be gauged from the fact that in 2000, Kolb produced a bibliography of research on his experiential learning theory and the LSI which contains details of 1004 studies in the fields of education (430), management (207), computer studies (104), psychology (101) and medicine (72), as well as nursing, accounting and law (see Mainemelis, Boyatzis and Kolb 2002). Kolb claims (1999) that an appreciation of differing learning styles can help people to work more effectively in teams, resolve conflict, communicate at work and at home, and choose careers. The effects of the experiential learning theory and the LSI have been widespread and the instrument itself has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.
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Section 1 A systematic review of le
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Table 44 13 learning-styles models
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