Engaging In Kolb's Clinical Learning Theory

The one thing I have gained from every service experience is the opportunity to meet people and connect through stories. Those can be stories of people working at the site, people benefitting from the site (i.e. underserved populations), or other volunteers. I love hearing about why other people become involved and how they approach service. Furthermore, listening is a great way to give people space they may desire to express themselves, and I find service opens the perfect opportunity for such interactions.

David Kolb developed a learning theory that involves concrete concepts which learners process experience. Kolb’s theory is based on intentions that learning takes place through four linear cycles based on experience and the personal changes that occur throughout that experience. As Kolb (1984) states, “learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (p. 38). Similar to other scholarly theories of learning, Kolb has many critics. I will discuss Kolb’s theory and summarize some of the critics to this theory. Also I will use Kolb’s theory and the critic’s comments to improve my approach to teaching.

For my service learning, I volunteered with two different community partners. The first service learning area I volunteered in was connecting with children at shelter and help work on a beautification project at the Miami Bridge Shelter. Miami Bridge is a Miami-Dade shelter for children who are victims of human trafficking, drug dealers, runaways, and abandoned youths which delivers them a fostering and supportive environment. They reconnect the youth ages from seven to seventeen with educational, social and job-related opportunities. While at Miami Bridge, a group of us from Barry had to paint the children’s bathrooms over with a different color such as purple for the girls and a cream color for the boys. After that, we had a task with the kids to pick up rocks in the sand with shovels because the shelter plans on making a play area there.

This was the experience I faced that was from the initiation through the completion of the learning. Throughout this experience of switching majors I have gone through Kolb’s learning cycle in order concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active

The service experience that I learned the most from would be my time spent parking cars and directing traffic at Country USA in 2013 and 2014. I had many experience throughout both of those week long events. I’ve learned not to high five someone under the influence of alcohol. I’ve learned how to interact with all kinds of different people. Those two events have shaped me more into who I want to be.

Service learning experience helped and brought awareness for me to get ready for the senior year field internship. I learned a lot during the semester by working with the Church World Service (CWS). It was not an easy volunteer service. CWS had provided a lot of experiences, I feel a lot of changes and progress in my professional skills. For example, time management, planning, asking for help and developing professional skills as a social worker student and learner.

The Kolb Experiential Learning theory (1984) drives a large component of my instructional plans. According to Kolb (1984), a person learns through experience and discovery. This theory is built around a learning cycle that involves 4 principles: 1) concrete experience, 2) reflective experience, 3) abstract conceptualization, and 4) active experimentation. Educators initially provide learners with opportunities to use concrete resources in learning about new concepts. Students then review their learning and reflect on the experience. This is followed by the opportunity to form abstract ideas using the new concepts and finally testing the concepts in new circumstances and situations.

Learning from experience is a sub-conscious activity and it is not until the learner forms thoughts at a conscious level that means fully understand the experience and learn from it, this is facilitated by refection role awareness and how to be processed. (Boud et al. 1985:19)

Experiential learning is also used to describe learning that arises through the self by reflection on everyday experience and interactions. The learning here is fostered within the learner rather than from an external force. The two understandings of experiential learning progresses Experiential learning from the humanistic camp to a learning that can arguably be used by all teachers.

Although Roger’s experiential learning theory has provided many examples of advantages, there are some limitations that follow in his outlined theory. When discussing the implications of experiential learning, we often wonder what the full meaning represents. “The main problem about experience, a problem which precedes questions about how we can learn best from experience, lies in a double unsaid: a silence about the implication of experience in language and a silence about the implication of experiential learning in discourse” (Boud, Cohen & Walker, 1993, p. 169). This author explains that through the very subconscious thoughts, we often approach events believing that they have to acquire a particular meaning. Sometimes

It focuses on the four stage learning cycle including concrete experience (CE), reflective observation (RO), abstract conceptualization (AC) and active experimentation (AE). These are four basic stages of Kolb’s learning theory. Fist stage focuses on

Experiential Learning is the art of learning from one’s own physical experiences in real life. The theory was developed by a man named Carl Rogers. The Experiential Learning theory originates from his views about psychotherapy and humanistic approach to psychology. He believes that Experiential Learning is equivalent to personal change and growth. He feels the all humans have a natural tendency to learn.

Kolb’s experiential learning cycle is a theory that argues that we learn from our experiences of life on a daily basis. Cognitive ability is the way people learn and Kolb believed from an early age we begin to develop a sort of instinctive preference as to the way we process information and use it. Kolb (1984) believes that the process of learning follows a pattern or cycle. Kolb’s cycle is made up of 4 stages; the first stage is concrete experience and Kolb believes that life is full of loads of different experiences that everyone can learn from and whether you are at home, work, school or even out shopping that there was experiences everywhere within those sectors and that it was a way for us to start the learning cycle. The concrete experience is the doing stage, the stage where you have the experience. We then have stage two which is reflective observation, this stage involved looking back at our experiences and reflecting on them. Stage three is the abstract conceptualisation which is

In the reading Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development by David Kolb (1984), he proposed that learning is a cycle process in which individuals learn through their own experiences in life. This notion of the learning cycle in which he was influenced by the ideas of three other theorists (Piaget, Dewey, and Lewinian) called it Experiential Learning Theory. Kolb’s theory was based on how people learned by imputing information and processing the information. Within this two abilities, there are four steps in which Kolb’s believe the learning process occurs. The first one he calls “concrete experience”, in which one actually does the learning right then and now. The second one is “reflective observation” when the learner thinks about what they did as a reflection of the experience. The next step is the “abstract conceptualization”, where the learner makes a generalization of the experience. The last step is “active experimentation”, where the learner puts to practice his/her understanding and adapts to it. The learner does this by taking all the first three steps of the learning cycle and seeing the results (pg. 30). Learning is a process in which individuals learn through trial and error. This process can then be reused with our prior experience to strengthen the outcome of our first experience. It is shaped as a cycle in the way we process information cognitively. This is how I understood of the reading on Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory.

American theorist David Kolb developed his concept of learning in 1984. He created a cycle containing four key stages: Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualism and Active Experimentation. He believed “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is create through experience” [Kolb, D. (1984)], therefore accepting that you must learn from your mistakes and progress in order to acquire full understanding of what you are studying.