How do we learn?

A while ago my youngest son brought home a letter from school. For the new theme "Brainstorm" they needed parents who wanted to come in small groups to tell about the way they learn. I gladly wanted to assist in this matter and decided that this would bea learning process for me as well.  

After some investigation of different ways of learning I found an article by psychologist David Kolb. Psychologist Kolb states that effective learning is the result of going through a cycle of four phases that merge.  People have a concrete experience, they go through something and that has intended and unintended effects. People will start to think about this. They will approach the concrete experience from different perspectives, this is called reflective observation. Then they start thinking about a possible coherence between the experience of this concrete situation and experiences they had in the past in different situations. If they can find a pattern, people will come to a theoretic model or they come up with an abstract concept for their findings. Lastly their model is tested in reality by active experimenting with actions in a different context. The circle is now completed and new experiences can be gained, on which can be reflected and which can lead to a new theoretic model and the following experiments.

Kolb states that it is necessary that someone passes through all four phases in order to learn as affectively as possible. In reality, people depending on their personality, develop a preference for a certain way of acting and this reflects in their way of learning. Depending on their preference people will start with a certain phase in the process. The” Doing type” wants to get started straight away and he or she will learn best if there is space for practice (trail and error). The “Reflective type” prefers to look at concrete experiences from different perspectives, tries to visualise possible consequences and fantasises about them. The reflective type learns by identification.The “Thinking type” likes to translate observations into hypotheses and theories. The “Thinker” then will try to relate back to the reality from the theoretic models he made. Lastly the “Decisive type” prefers to solve problems that have only one solution. The starting point of the decisive type will thereby be clear and brief principles that he or she will apply in practise.

To return to the question in the introduction; I found that I had too little knowledge about the question "how do I learn" (concrete experience). I then gathered information about different visions with regard to learning and analysed these (reflective observation). Then I put the observations in a theoretic framework, which gave it meaning to me (abstract concept). I spent the most time on this second and third phase. Now I can test this theory in practice (active experimenting).

Sources: www.todio.nl