Research: David Kolb

-David Kolb published his learning styles model in 1984 from which he developed his learning style inventory. 

-Kolb's experiential learning theory works on two levels: a four-stage cycle of learning and four separate learning styles.  Much of Kolb’s theory is concerned with the learner’s internal cognitive processes.

-Kolb states that learning involves the acquisition of abstract concepts that can be applied flexibly in a range of situations.  In Kolb’s theory, the impetus for the development of new concepts is provided by new experiences.

The Experimental Learning Cycle

1. Concrete Experience - (a new experience or situation is encountered, or a reinterpretation of existing experience).
2. Reflective Observation of the new experience. (of particular importance are any inconsistencies between experience and understanding).
3. Abstract Conceptualisation (reflection gives rise to a new idea, or a modification of an existing abstract concept).
4. Active Experimentation (the learner applies them to the world around them to see what results).

Learning Styles

Kolb's learning theory (1974) sets out four distinct learning styles, which are based on a four-stage learning cycle. Kolb explains that different people naturally prefer a certain single different learning style. Various factors influence a person's preferred style.  For example, social environment, educational experiences, or the basic cognitive structure of the individual.

Whatever influences the choice of style, the learning style preference itself is actually the product of two pairs of variables, or two separate 'choices' that we make, which Kolb presented as lines of an axis, each with 'conflicting' modes at either end:

A typical presentation of Kolb's two continuums is that the east-west axis is called the Processing Continuum (how we approach a task), and the north-south axis is called the Perception Continuum (our emotional response, or how we think or feel about it).

Kolb believed that we cannot perform both variables on a single axis at the same time (e.g., think and feel). Our learning style is a product of these two choice decisions.