Kolb’s learning cycle has formed the basis of practical work in experiential learning and competency-based courses. Honey and Mumford (1982) used this cycle to produce a useful model of learning styles by linking the stages of Kolb’s cycle to four descriptions of imaginary people who are happiest to work at each stage of learning.
Honey and Mumford have produced a questionnaire with 20 questions aimed at each of the four learning preferences so that students can find their ‘preferred learning style’; this questionnaire is very popular with young students who sometimes use the results to explain why they did poorly at school! Many young people come out strongly as ‘activists’ and there are usually some ‘pragmatists’, but very few ‘reflectors’ or ‘theorists’. Most intelligent adult learners come out very evenly-balanced between the four styles and this seems to point to a general observation that effective learners can use all four approaches. Appreciating the difference between the learning styles is important for younger learners because it allows the teacher to select a teaching method which is geared to the preferred learning style of the majority of the learning group. For example, I have found that effective learning results if I use lots of jolly activity for young trainees, a calm reflective approach for older learners, some tough theory for groups of young PhDs and a problem-solving approach for groups of managers and business students. Here are some extracts from the descriptions which Honey and Mumford use, together with some brief notes on the type of activities which will help learning in each of the preferred learning styles.
Active learners
Activists are described as people ‘who welcome new experiences’, ‘enjoy things as they happen and greet every new sensation with enthusiasm’. They rush into every new experience ‘without looking for drawbacks’ and ‘tend to take centre stage’. They are easily bored and prefer to be where the action is taking place: they are happy to combine with other people and treat any difficulty as an opportunity for problem-solving. It is no wonder that a lot of young people are delighted by this refreshing description.
At present, the process of active learning is very much in fashion for both teaching and training because the active learner is perceived as one who is motivated and interested. Lecturers and instructors are encouraged to make sure that there are lots of things for students to do. These ideas fit in with Carl Rogers’ (1970) approach for student-centred learning and again it is a deliberate attempt to try to meet the individual’s particular needs. I am not so certain that active learning meets all the needs of effective learning but it certainly gets the learner off to a good and enthusiastic start. My reservation is that I wonder if, with all this activity going on, the learner has the time to ‘engage brain’.
The person who likes active learning will enjoy learning through games, competitive teamwork tasks and role play.
Reflective learners
The Honey and Mumford ‘reflector’ is a person who has a cautious, thoughtful and low-profile image, preferring to watch other people and taking the back seat as a listener. They are calm, take their time and prefer to act only after all the available information has been collected; they like to look at every problem from all available viewpoints. What is described seems to be the behaviour of a slightly older person – don’t we learn to become more reflective and a little more cautious with age?
This stage is clearly a process of the assimilation of knowledge. It is useful to look here at the work of George Kelly (1955) on what happens in reflection. Kelly regarded all people as having a set of personal templates or standards against which they measure each new experience; when the new information fits our existing system we just confirm what we thought already, but when something doesn’t fit into our measuring standards then we have to think about the new thing and either reject it or alter our template system to accommodate the new knowledge.
Reflection is also important when you are trying to put together evidence of prior experience and knowledge; learners can gain access to many programmes by producing evidence for APL (Accreditation of Prior Learning) or APEL (Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning) with the presentation of a portfolio of evidence of what you have learned before. It is not enough to say that, T did this…’, I went to…’, ‘I attended…’.
To gain credit for having covered course material or being competent in particular areas you have to reflect upon your experiences and what you have seen and done so that you show that you have learned; the secret of good evidence for APL and APEL is to be able to write down your reflections on your learning.
The person who likes to learn in this reflective manner prefers learning activities which are observational, like viewing video, or self-directed, like carrying out an investigation.
Theorists
Honey and Mumford describe the theorist as someone who learns by investigating the evidence according to general rules, carrying out study in logical steps. They will use all the stages of cognitive knowledge described in Bloom’s theory of the cognitive domain. These learning types like to stick to step-by-step processes and are not happy with intuitive leaps; to the young activists, these people would be ‘eggheads’.
Most people do not think in logical steps, so this type of approach has to be learned and logic is difficult to handle until you have learned the rules and steps. This stage of Kolb’s cycle is the process of working with concepts. It is the area of thinking in rules and general applications, when the learner puts forward hypothetical ideas which have to be tested.
Thinking in abstract terms is an important stage of learning development; without it the learner cannot use the handy short-cuts of symbols and general principles and learning becomes a very slow and roundabout process. Here is an example: to understand the reaction –
HCl + NaOH -> NaCl + H2O
you have to know about and be able to think in terms of chemical formulae and the general concepts of chemical reactions. It takes much longer to say:
If you take a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid and mix it with a dilute solution of an alkaline substance called sodium hydroxide, these two chemicals will interact to form common salt which is called sodium hydroxide, and water will be the by-product.
In my example it takes four lines of English prose to describe the simplest possible chemical reaction: imagine how many words it would take to describe a large molecule like a protein, with hundreds of linked elements and a variety of important structural details. The use of chemical symbols and structural diagrams makes chemistry understandable, when a word description would be impossible to grasp because of length and complexity.
Theorists think with symbols and general rules which make for effective and accurate learning; they prefer learning activities which methodically explore the interrelationship between ideas, principles and examples of general applications.
Pragmatists
Honey and Mumford describe pragmatists as people who are happy to learn by trying out ideas in practice. They are the people who want to get on with the job, responding to a challenging demand with an enthusiastic plan of action; they are not concerned with general principles because their only criterion is, ‘Does it work?’
Pragmatism is associated in education with the work of John Dewey (1952), who experimented with a pragmatic approach to learning in his school in Chicago at tike end of the nineteenth century; he was still writing about progressive learning methods in the early 1950s. The pragmatic approach always has a practical theme: the learner works on real-life problems and learns from those who have solved the problems already. The ‘if it works, if s good’ approach to learning is the basis of a more democratic approach to teaching, and Dewey’s ideas have been very influential in education for many years. However, there is an important proviso: if you start from a sound basis of good practice, the student will learn to develop further sound practice, but if you start from a basis of poor practice and unsound principles, then the learner perpetuates poor practice.
The ‘pragmatist’ prefers to learn in a down-to-earth way with learning activities which are as close as possible to real working situations; they are people who thrive on learning with computer simulations of real experiences and from direct work experience.
The flexible learner
Although it is always useful to break down a system into parts so that you can understand each bit before attempting to understand the whole, the disadvantage is that an integrated understanding of the ‘whole’ may be lost. While it may help young learners to identify with active learning so that they are motivated to learn, eventually they will have to learn to use all styles of learning because this is the route to becoming a mature and independent learner. Kolb’s learning cycle summarizes the progression and the skilled learner can enter at any stage, repeating the sequence over and over again.
I think that it is selling young learners short to pretend that all they want to learn can be achieved in a style which they find easy, because some worthwhile learning is not facile. The basic skills of numeracy, literacy, memorizing, thinking and being able to handle rules and concepts are learnt by being able to operate as an activist, a reflector, a theorist and a pragmatist. If a young learner fails to achieve these basic learning skills then most advanced study becomes impossible or, at least, very difficult indeed. Some youngsters should be dragged screaming backwards if necessary into basic skills so that the rest of their lives are not permanently blighted.
Lateral Learning
Edward de Bono (1969) has made a most useful contribution to learning theory. His whole concept of lateral thinking encourages:
• learning thinking skills
• creative problem-solving
• the generation of original ideas.
When he talks about individual talents or natural abilities he uses the example of different levels of skills in driving a car; just as some people are skilled drivers, so some people are skilled thinkers. The analogy continues with the comparison between a good driver who can do very well in a small car, and a bad driver who may not be very successful in a high performance classic car; in just the same way a good thinker operates his or her modest inherited talents as a very successful learner, whereas a poor thinker can ruin great inherited mental talent!
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Tags: Honey and Mumford, learning cycle
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