The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Coaching: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

LEARNING STYLES: DAVID KOLB, PETER HONEY, AND ALAN MUMFORD

Building on the work of John Dewey (1938) and Kurt Lewin (1997), psychologist David Kolb (1984), along with his associate Roger Fry, introduced a model to explain how adults learn from experience and process their experience in different ways. Kolb asserted that adults learn by doing, so experiential learning involves a direct encounter with the topic being studied—what is happening in the present—and adapting to the situation as it unfolds, rather than merely thinking about it. His cyclical process involves four elements:

1. Concrete experience (CE): direct experience; action

2. Reflective observation (RO): reflecting on the effects of the action

3. Abstract conceptualization (AC): ...