Could I have your attention please?

Could I have your attention please?

Kolb’s four learning styles

Do you ever feel you are competing for your students' attention? Nowadays, it seems that teachers have to struggle more and more in order to get their students to focus. Have you ever heard of different learning styles? Getting to know learning styles can be an important step in achieving a deeper self-knowledge: something key in order to get along well in life.

David Kolb is an educational psychologist who affirms that “learning is a process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.” He is known for having broken down learning into a four-stage cycle of learning on the one hand, and four separate learning styles on the other.

Getting to know Kolb’s theory can help teachers and students develop learning in a more organic and efficient manner.

Kolb emphasizes the importance of the experiential learning cycle. There are four elements that are experienced in a cyclical manner, even if the order can be changed up without causing too much damage. There is concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation.

An example may help to understand. The concrete experience is coming into contact with a new experience. For example, students may arrive to the classroom and find that all the books have fallen off the shelf onto the floor. The contrast from the ordinary situation that they find in the classroom serves as a stimulus to their imagination and gets them thinking.

Reflective observation can be guided. By asking the right questions, the teacher is able to make them think about why and how the books have moved from their place on the shelf to the floor. At this stage of the game, the outcome is not fixed. If the teacher wishes to give a lesson on the movements of the earth’s plates, he can begin by speaking about the power of an earthquake. If he desires to give a lesson in anger management, this might serve as an example of what could happen when someone’s emotions take control of him.

Abstract conceptualization brings the data into a new context, giving the theory that is to be imparted. This is the concept-heavy section of learning. Most teachers spend most of their time here, perhaps unaware of the fact that without the previous and the following step, their efforts may be only partially rewarded. Now, perhaps the student is better able to understand the phenomenon of earthquakes.

Active experimentation has the learner applying his new knowledge to his own world. Through the joy of learning, his world somehow becomes bigger. Now, the student can reflect on earthquake safety or look into how earthquakes affect engineering. His own curiosity serves as a motor for the next stage of learning.

Here, we have seen the four stages the experiential learning cycle. In the near future, we will look at the four learning styles discovered by David Kolb. For more information, you can check out: https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html