Thoughts on Alice Kolb and David Kolb's "Learning Styles and Learning Spaces: Enhancing Experiential Learning in Higher Education."

As a part of an overall effort to augment and diversify his consulting work, Dr. Nolting often takes time out of his busy schedule to keep up with recent journal scholarship and revisit classic articles, which have been of use to him in the past. In this spirit, a few months ago, he returned to a classic 2005 entry from Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb in Academy of Management Learning & Education, which brilliantly describes the ins and outs of experiential learning.

Calling for the use of learning style assessments, the authors encourage teachers to establish “learning spaces” capable of servings students who prefer any one of four major learning styles (Concrete Experience, Active Experimentation, Reflective Observation, and Abstract Conceptualization). This goal resulted in one of the most famous extant learning styles surveys.

During a recent training seminar at Indian River State College, it struck Dr. Nolting just how well this research gels with the math-specific learning styles and modalities he describes in his own research and consulting. This considered, he wanted to share a few thoughts on the importance of educating tutors and professors on how learning styles affect learning in the classroom, tutoring centers, and beyond. 

"I cannot stress enough," Dr. Nolting says,

how important it is to help students and faculty understand the concepts of learning styles and how they affect math learning; especially in the era of math redesigns. I see this more and more as I travel the country.

Just two weeks ago, I was conducting a professional tutor and math instructor training seminar at Indian River State College in Florida. Specifically, I was there to help them integrate learning styles and study skills into their new tutor labs. The college understands that learning styles are important, and they shrewdly require their students to take a learning styles inventory. Still, they wanted to train their staff on how to best use this information to benefit their students.

The training mostly involved modality and cognitive styles. Modality styles are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, which all involve figuring out the best mode to input new information. Cognitive styles are Innovative, Analytic, Common Sense, and Dynamic (styles similar to those listed in the article above: Reflective, Abstract, Concrete, Active). These styles all indicate how information is cognitively processed once it is inputted through modality styles.

After completing the workshop, feedback demonstrated that most of the professional tutors and professors had not fully understood the full range of learning styles before receiving training, nor had they understood how to tutor each student according to his or her preferred way of learning. During the training sessions, they realized how important it is to make sure students understand their best learning styles and obtain the expertise needed to apply these styles outside of the classroom.
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Learning styles training helps tutors improve effectiveness and efficiency. For faculty, it helps improve instruction, as well as their students’ ability to learn independently. Remember, you do not have to teach/tutor according to all learning styles all the time—just make sure to occasionally use most of them over the course of the semester. This will allow students to figure out how they best learn mathematics and assist them in using multiple input styles and cognitive styles as they do their homework or prepare for tests. 
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For more, please read the original article, which is available at JSTOR. 
Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb, Academy of Management Learning & Education Vol.4 No.2 (Jun. 2005) pp 193-212)