The Experiential Learning Cycle |
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The ideas on this page
have been adopted and adapted to all kinds of learning
situation, but it should be noted that they refer to
learning from experience or discovery (such as situated
learning) rather
than to taught (or "reception" learning, as
Ausubel calls it) or rote learning.
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Kolb (1984) provides one of the most useful (but contestable) descriptive models available of the adult learning process, inspired by the work of Kurt Lewin. |
Despite many claims, Lewin did not develop a learning "cycle" as such. See his paper on "Field Theory and Learning" (1942; ref. below) For the latest
tools |
This suggests that there are four stages in learning which follow from each other: Concrete Experience is followed by Reflection on that experience on a personal basis. This may then be followed by the derivation of general rules describing the experience, or the application of known theories to it (Abstract Conceptualisation), and hence to the construction of ways of modifying the next occurrence of the experience (Active Experimentation), leading in turn to the next Concrete Experience. All this may happen in a flash, or over days, weeks or months, depending on the topic, and there may be a "wheels within wheels" process at the same time.
The most direct application of the model is to
use it to ensure that (pace the reservations
above) teaching and tutoring activities give full value
to each stage of the process. This may mean that for
the tutor or mentor, a major task is to "chase"
the learner round the cycle, asking questions which
encourage Reflection, Conceptualisation, and ways of
testing the ideas. (The Concrete Experience itself may
occur outside the tutorial/mentoring session).
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Kolb is not the only writer to develop a cyclical model: go here for an overview of alternatives. |
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Honey and Mumford (1982) have built a typology of Learning Styles around this sequence, identifying individual preferences for each stage (Activist, Reflector, Theorist, Pragmatist respectively), Kolb also has a test instrument (the Learning Style Inventory) but has carried it further by relating the process also to forms of knowledge. |
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Learning styles mean that:
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A sceptical view of learning styles in general And a press release on research to support the argument And the full paper (Coffield, Moseley, Hall & Ecclestone, 2004, for download) A group of doctors immediately grasped the significance of this distinction: their patients, they said, know their illness by direct acquaintance, whereas they know about it. For many people, knowledge by acquaintance is the only valid form of knowledge, and they distrust "book-learning". One of the most frequent questions to social workers from parents is, "Do you have any children?". Answer "no", and your credibility is shot. |
Elaborations of the Experiential Learning CycleNot all forms of skill and knowledge emphasise all the stages of the Cycle to the same extent, and Kolb has carried the argument further by relating topics and subject areas to the cycle in the following ways:
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The denotation/connotation construct is mine rather
than Kolb's, offered as a way of clarifying the model.
Kolb also plays around with the spelling of "intension"
(sic.).
This distinction is not easily identified by many people, and is one example of where Kolb may go over the top: he does have a tendency to elevate his model to a theory of Life, the Universe and Everything. Nevertheless, there is a simpler point here, which he does not make very clearly: Concrete Experience and Reflective Observation are essentially the private and personal parts of the cycle, whereas Abstract Conceptualisation and Active Experimentation are more public and visible to others. Hence behavioural theories of learning concentrate almost exclusively on the visible Active Experimentation processes. |
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Forms of Knowledge and the Learning CycleThe four quadrants of the cycle are associated with
four different forms of knowledge, in Kolb's view. Each
of these forms is paired with its diagonal opposite.
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Convergent and Divergent Knowledge
Assimilation and AccommodationHands up if you remember your Piaget! Assimilation and Accommodation are in his view two dialectically related processes (i.e. opposing principles — thesis and antithesis — between which a compromise — synthesis — has to be negotiated) which describe (roughly) different relationship between knowledge of the outside world and knowledge already held in our heads.
Kolb's approach to integrating these Piagetian
ideas with the cycle is generally less successful than
his application of Hudson. The search for new rules
(Abstract Conceptualisation) to formalise observations
(Reflective Observation) may well be an accommodative
exercise, and very often trial and error learning (Active
Experimentation) consists of moving from one known rule
to another in the hope that one of them fits, so it
is has an important element of assimilation in it. Nevertheless,
the approach does help to focus attention on the relationship
between the general and the particular.
Assimilation includes fitting particular instances into
general categories, and Accommodation is about working
from the general principle to the particular application
Personally, I would replace the term "Assimilation" with the more common-sense one of "Description" and "Accommodation" with "Prescription", in the sense of a concern for what you ought to or must do. |
For academics only! See ILLERIS K (2007) How We Learn; learning and non-learning in school and beyond London; Routledge, for a discussion which encompasses the latest European as well as American and British thinking in the field. But it's not easy going. |
The Kolb Model and Subject DisciplinesKolb and his colleagues have undertaken extensive empirical work using the Learning Styles Inventory to relate different subject disciplines to the quadrants of the learning cycle and hence to different forms of knowledge: partly for reasons of space and partly for copyright reasons, you are referred to the text for the results.
This would suggest that different subject areas call for different learning styles, and raises the usual chicken and egg question as to whether the discipline promotes a particular learning style, or whether preferred learning style leads to adoption of a discipline, or of course, both. (All of the above assumes that there is some validity in this conceptualisation of "learning styles".) |
More links and ideas (although some may bring you back here!) Click here to read a Belorussian translation of this page courtesy of Galina Miklosic |
Notes(1890-1947) Originally a Gestalt psychologist in Berlin, Lewin moved to the USA and kick-started theoretical work on adult learning (applied particularly to attitude change in health promotion) and group dynamics. His work on life-space etc. was broadly phenomenological in approach. Little read now because of his tortuous pseudo-mathematical style, but the grandfather of many current ideas. The closest reference is to LEWIN K (1942) "Field Theory and Learning" in D Cartwright (ed.) Field Theory in Social Science: selected theoretical papers, London; Social Science Paperbacks, 1951. More on Lewin from the excellent "Infed" site. Read and stay to browse! [Back] The latest version of the LSI can be downloaded or taken on-line at http://www.learningfromexperience.com (for a fee). Dissenting voicesPhil Race, one of the most inspiring (and practical) staff developers in higher education in the UK, finds Kolb and other cyclical models unrealistic, prescriptive and needlessly academic. Download his PowerPoint™ presentation on his alternative "ripples" model from http://www.phil-race.co.uk/. It is discussed in more detail in RACE P (2005) Making Learning Happen, London; Sage. And Peter Jarvis, one of the most authoritative researchers on adult education, also has a serious critique of the model in Jarvis (2006)
(Last up-dated 2 September 2015) |
Atherton J S (2013) Learning and Teaching; [On-line: UK] retrieved from
Original
material by James Atherton: last up-dated overall 10 February 2013
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