Forms of Knowledge and the Learning Cycle

Click on the picture to reveal the four quadrants

The four quadrants of the cycle are associated with four different forms of knowledge, in Kolb's view. Each of these forms is paired with its diagonal opposite.

 Broadly speaking, he suggests that practitioners of creative disciplines, such as the arts, are found in the Divergent quadrant.

 Pure scientists and mathematicians are in the Assimilative quadrant

 Applied scientists and lawyers are in the Convergent quadrant

 Professionals who have to operate more intuitively, such as teachers, are in the Accommodative quadrant

 There are also differences in the location of specialists within the more general disciplines
This would suggest that different subject areas call for different learning styles, and raises the usual chicken and egg question as to whether the discipline promotes a particular learning style, or whether preferred learning style leads to adoption of a discipline, or of course, both. (All of the above assumes that there is some validity in this conceptualisation of "learning styles".)

I strongly believe that people learn in different ways and that there isn't one way of learning. As teachers we recognise the way our students learn and adopt our teaching methods to the student in order to help them learn. This should mean that we need to adopt all of our teaching methods into the classroom, this then should only make teaching and learning a lot more interesting