learning-styles

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.