That’s just the way he is

Kolb’s four learning styles

Do you prefer to listen to books on tape or do you need to do a hands-on experiment in order to jump into a lesson? Would you rather read a book or watch a movie and discuss it? Do you like to daydream? Recognizing one’s own learning style, or recognizing the learning style of those whom one is teaching can make the difference between “wow” and “blah.” Even the most dynamic activities will not have the same impact for everybody.

David Kolb sets up two learning axes: feeling-thinking and doing-watching. The feeling-thinking axis is known as the processing continuum. This has to do with the way we process information. Are we more inclined to be feeling or thinking? The doing-watching axis is the perception continuum and has to do with our way of seeing the world. Do we like to get involved and get our hands dirty or do we propose to look on from afar?

The combination of the two axes, or these four terms, leads to the creation of four quadrants which describe four learning styles.

	Active Experimentation (Doing)	Reflective Observation (Watching)
Concrete Experience (Feeling)	Accommodating (CE/AE)	Diverging (CE/RO)
Abstract Conceptualization (Thinking)	Converging (AC/AE)	Assimilating (AC/RO)

Each student can fall generally speaking into one of the four learning styles. Kolb posits that one does not normally engage in the two opposites of the processing or perception continuum at the same time. Being able to recognize the activity one is requiring of the students will help to make sure that there is an effective learning methodology being applied. One interesting addition to the theory came from a video on 4MAT learning. Here it says that the diverging learning style is characterized by the question “why?”, while the assimilating learning style is characterized by the question “what?”. “How?” is a favorite question for the converging learning style while the accommodating learning style prefers “if?”.

One of my uncles used to say that the burden of a good communication falls on the one communicating. If a teacher sees that the class is not getting the material, it is important to take a step back and see if there is anything he can do to increase comprehension. Generally speaking, students like to learn from somebody who cares about them. A great sign of caring for them is to take the time to learn their learning styles.

The different learning styles end up being complementary and this is why there are engineers, doctors and artists in the world. Each may have genius in his own way, without necessarily exhausting the types of genius of the rest of people.

Today, we looked at the four learning styles presented by David Kolb. It is worth checking out. Feel free to let me know what you think. For more information, you can check out: https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html