Learning Style

People are all different. But these differences come from the same source. This source is sometimes called Learning Styles. These styles have been described, amongst others, by Kolb.

When learning, people have to make a choice between being Active (like trying something) or Reflective (let's pause and think first). People also have to make a choice between Concrete (what is it, how does it feel?) and Abstract (why is this, what rules apply?). So the four LearningStyles are:

For an orthogonal concept, see also

And perhaps related but I'm not sure (yet?) exactly how,

Then perhaps having learned, you move on.


I'm not sure that classifying learners is as useful as delineating the elements of learning.

Trying to base a study method on who's learning will fail, no? It is true that some people are impatient with the just the written word, or bored with just spoken input, or unsatisfied with just visuals, but this does not alter the elements of learning and thus the elements of study.

To focus on the personalities of the persons studying/learning is to miss the point [of learning].

It also misses the fact that some of these "quirks" are actually predictable symptoms of incorrectly applied learning method.

It's interesting to note the "preferred" approaches to learning, but hazardous to project that into a methodology.


odd one out here since it refers to groups of learners, not individual study

Then the title of the page is misleading. LearningStyle does not just apply to individual study, but rather groups of learners. Perhaps titling the page StylesOfIndividualStudy? or some such would help.

Good point, thanks. <edit>. -- MatthewAstley, DeleteWhenCooked


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