The science of learning styles: what educators need to know / Wan Mardyatul Miza Wan Tahir and Ja’izah Abdul Jabar

Learning styles have been a widely discussed concept in education for decades. The idea that individuals learn best through specific modalities such as visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic (VARK) has influenced instructional strategies worldwide. As such the emergence of various learning style models has been studied, and the most distinguished model was developed by Kolb in 1984. According to Kolb, learning is a holistic process of knowledge creation which requires the interaction between social and personal knowledge. This model views learning as a circular process which involves four processes in the learning cycle:
1) Concrete Experience (CE) forms the basis for observation and reflection on experiences.
2) Reflective Observation (RO) which evaluates the situation to contribute to the solution of the problem. 3) Abstract Conceptualization (AC), which involves the generation of theories.
4) Active Experimentation (AE), where theories and concepts are put into practice.

This learning style model is the basis for the learning style model developed by Honey and Mumford in 1992. This model is represented by Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist learning styles which correspond to the AE, RO, AC and CE approaches of the Kolb cycle.