Learning-Style Models, Assessment, and Evidence for Instructional Matching

All flashcards

What is a learning-style preference?

A person’s favored way of receiving or working with information. A preference alone does not establish that matching instruction to it improves learning.

What are the four modes in Kolb’s learning cycle?

Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualization, and Active Experimentation. Kolb proposed that effective learning engages all four.

What characterizes an Accommodator in Kolb’s model?

An Accommodator combines Concrete Experience with Active Experimentation and is associated with practical, hands-on doing.

What is the Assimilator combination in Kolb’s model?

Abstract Conceptualization plus Reflective Observation, associated with organizing ideas and developing explanations.

What are Honey and Mumford’s four styles?

Activist, Reflector, Theorist, and Pragmatist. Their model adapts Kolb’s experiential cycle and treats styles as developed through experience and preferences.

Quiz questions

1. Which set names the modalities in the VAK model?Answer: Visualizing, Auditory, and Kinesthetic.
2. In Fleming’s VARK model, what does multimodality mean?Answer: A learner uses or prefers more than one mode.
3. Which pair of dimensions forms the Gregorc and Butler model?Answer: Concrete or abstract perception, combined with sequential or random ordering.
4. In evaluating a learning-style assessment, what does reliability concern?Answer: How consistently the assessment produces results.
5. What result would support the meshing hypothesis in a rigorous test?Answer: Different style groups achieve better results with their corresponding instructional methods.