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The Kolb Learning Cycle

David Kolb's model of the Learning Cycle (LC) has also been described by various authors and researchers over the years including John Dewey, W. Edwards Deming, and Charles Handy (Ross, Smith & Roberts, 1994). The cycle refers to the process by which individuals, teams, and organizations attend to and understand their experiences, and consequently modify their behaviors.

The failure of many efforts result from making repeated mistakes or inability to learn from experience. The LC is based on the idea that the more often we reflect on a task, the more often we have the opportunity to modify and refine our efforts. The LC contains the following four stages:

The Learning Cycle

Experiencing

mmersing oneself in the "doing"

2. Reflection involves stepping back from task involvement and reviewing what has been done and experienced. The skills of attending, noticing differences, and applying terms helps identify subtle events and communicate them clearly to others. One's paradigm (values, attitudes, values, beliefs) influences whether one can differentiate certain events. One's vocabulary is also influential, since without words, it is difficult to verbalize and discuss ones perceptions.

3. Conceptualization involves interpreting the events that have been noticed and understanding the relationships among them. It is at this stage that theory may be particularly helpful as a template for framing and explaining events. One's paradigm again influences the interpretive range a person is willing to entertain.

4. Planning enables taking the new understanding and translates it into predictions about what is likely to happen next or what actions should be taken to refine the way the task is handled.

The timing of the LC is particularly important. If one waits until after a task is completed, there is no opportunity to refine it until a similar task arises. For example, if you only had a single final exam in a class, there would have been no opportunity to modify how you studied during the term. However, continual reflection leaves the person spending more time on thinking than getting the task done--these must be balanced. In general, the learning cycle should be used during initial framing of a problem to see whether past experience may offer an approach; during natural breaks in tasking such as the end of meetings or workdays; when progress is noticeably going well or poorly; or when a crisis occurs that disrupts the process.

The logic of the learning cycle is to make many small and incremental improvements, which when done by many people, constitute major improvements over time. For example, if each day after classes or work you reflected on your efforts and identified just one small thing to do differently (that would improve your performance), by the end of the year you would have 365 improvements. Consider the implications for a team or entire organization! When this procedure is implemented as a habit or norm, continual improvement results.

The model can also be applied to teams:

Doing: the team members are engaged in team task and interaction
Reflection: Team members use public reflection and open dialog to share perceptions of what has occurred, how they interact, and evaluate facilitative and nonfacilitative team processes
Interpretation: The team increases cohesiveness and develops a common culture by constructing shared meanings about the events.
Planning: The team engages in joint planning, deciding, and express commitment to action.

The Learning Style Inventory (LSI) is an attempt to measure learning dimensions and styles of individuals and team members. The original version used single words which testakers ascribed to, and derived a score on each of the dimensions. This test was found subject to wide interpretation of the single terms and was replaced by short phrases in a later version (1985). [The test is available from McBer & Co., Training Resources Group, 116 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA, 02116, 617-437-7080]. Research critiques indicate that while the dimensions hold up factorally, the intersections for learning styles (e.g., diverger, converger, assimilator, accomodator) are not as clear and do not hold up as well.

Second Order Change

The advantage of the learning cycle is that it enables an individual, team or organization to learn from experience and thereby improve performance. This, however, may not be sufficient when the assumptions and beliefs on which the learning is based is outdated. It is possible for one to complete all the stages of the learning cycle, while still perceiving, interpreting and acting in a biased way. Periodically, one should question the model itself; look for exceptions to the rule; and challenge the dominant paradigm to determine whether it still holds. The figure below shows the second loop for learning.

Ross, R., Smith, B., & Roberts, C. (1994). The wheel of learning: Mastering the rhythm of a learning organization. In P. Senge, R. Ross, B. Smith, C. Roberts, & A. Kleiner (Eds.), The fifth discipline fieldbook. New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prenticve Hall.

Walton, M. (1986). The Deming management method. New York, NY: Perigee.

Links

Learning Style Inventory (Revised)
Critique of LSI (excellent review of validity and reliability)
Webpages on the Kolb Model