For my essay (Which i have already written, submitted, and received grades for) I thought long and hard about what my topic would be, and how to tackle it. Although it was a seemingly simple task, an essay about teaching – It proved to be for me (and many others) a daunting and complex task. This was perhaps due to the small word count, and the large amount of information we needed to cram into it. It was also due in my case, to the immense amount of research i had to do. This would have not been a problem usually, but due to the advanced academic lingo used, i felt entirely out of my depth.
Regardless, I persevered and managed to scrape a pass.
The task which should have been one i embarked on earlier (i am overrun with deadlines) was to find two articles on my subject and write a critical opinion piece on one or both articles.
Here are my chosen articles:
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/105382590803100103
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232819037_Kolb’s_experiential_learning_model_Critique_from_a_modelling_perspective
In article one, “Experience, Reflect, Critique: The end of the ‘Learning cycles’ Era” On the topic of Kolb’s learning Jason Seaman writes: “It has been argued, however, that stepwise models inadequately explain the holistic learning processes that are central to learning from experience, and that they lack scientific or philosophical foundations.”
My response to this is partly one of agreement, and partly confusion. This is because although i agree that teaching methods should be catered on a closer level to the student(s), i also think that teaching it’self needs to have a solid foundation and traditional structure in order to be effective and create a general system of learning. Philosophy seems to be a bit irrelevant to the consumption of information by students, but from a scientific point of view i agree that there should be more studies done on the varying types of learning styles and what they respond to best.
In article two: “Kolb’s experiential learning model: critique from a modelling perspective:
“Applying accepted modelling and categorization criteria to Kolb’s basic model reveals fundamental graphic syntax errors, a failure to meet modellers’ graphic sufficiency and simplification tests, categorization and definitional problems relating to learning activities and typologies, misconstrued bi-polarities and flawed logic”
This suggests that instead of looking primarily into the wording and theory, the charts and models themselves have fundamental errors. I won’t pretend to understand that i know entirely what this means, but i grasp that essentially, it implies that Kolb spent so much time on his general theory, that he didn’t proofread his demonstrative models. This, if true, in my humble opinion – voids the entire learning theory. Models and charts are supposed to be based entirely on concrete facts. If you don’t have the fundamental structure clarified then the structure is unstable and unreliable.
Despite both of these opinion pieces, i maintain the belief that Kolb’s theory is still valid, and worthwhile. Although it perhaps needs some work on specification (And i am sure that other learning theorists are perfectly capable of developing it to it’s best potential) – It stands as a good basic model for understanding learning logic, and the processes one must go through to learn effectively.
CS6025 LEARNING LOG 