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Kolb’s learning cycle and learning styles

Kolb’s cycle with its two axes and the four learning styles that sit between the stages.

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Kolb's experiential learning cycle (Kolb 1984) with its two dimensions and four learning styles. The vertical axis, grasping experience, runs from concrete experience (top) to abstract conceptualization (bottom). The horizontal axis, transforming experience, runs from active experimentation (left) to reflective observation (right). Each learning style combines the two stages on either side of it:
Kolb's experiential learning cycle and learning styles. Derek Jansen, Grad Coach, CC BY 4.0.

What it shows

Kolb’s cycle with its two dimensions and the four learning styles derived from them. The vertical axis is how a learner grasps experience, from concrete experience at the top to abstract conceptualization at the bottom. The horizontal axis is how they transform it, from active experimentation on the left to reflective observation on the right.

Each learning style sits between the two stages it combines. The bike example from the four-stage version is carried over, so the two diagrams can be used together.

How to read it

  1. Diverging sits between concrete experience and reflective observation.

  2. Assimilating sits between abstract conceptualization and reflective observation.

  3. Converging sits between abstract conceptualization and active experimentation.

  4. Accommodating sits between concrete experience and active experimentation.

The two dimensions

  • Grasping experience (vertical): concrete experience to abstract conceptualization.
  • Transforming experience (horizontal): active experimentation to reflective observation.
  • The cycle runs clockwise from concrete experience.
  • Source: Kolb (1984).

Ways to use it in teaching

  • Present the styles as a descriptive model. The evidence that matching teaching to a learner’s style improves learning is weak: a review by Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer and Bjork (2008, “Learning styles: Concepts and evidence”, Psychological Science in the Public Interest 9(3): 105–119) found virtually no evidence for it.

  • Ask students which pair of stages they rely on most when studying, and which they tend to skip.

  • Follow the four-stage cycle diagram with this one, once the cycle itself is familiar.

Sources

Kolb, D. A. (1984), Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall (2nd ed. 2015, Pearson). The bike example is adapted from Wikipedia's Experiential learning article, which cites Kraft, R. G. (1994), "Bike riding and the art of learning", in Barnes, Christensen and Hansen (eds), Teaching and the Case Method, Harvard Business School Press.

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