Personal Reflection On Kolb's Theory Of Active Learning

My personal understanding of learning was the traditional approach where the teacher talks and learners listen. I was following the same approach and only after joining CITDL, my understanding was challenged and I realized that learners need to take responsibility of their learning. Learning would be long lasting only when the child takes the initiative towards self-learning. I agree with Bruner’s (1960) theory of Constructivism i.e. People learn best from their own practical life experiences and their prior knowledge. So, I started to adopt active learning ways where learners learnt through hands on experiences and then only I realized that Active Learning could bring about quantifiable measurable results. I was also influenced immensely with

Community of Practice by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1998) strengthened my personal belief of learning in groups who share a craft or profession or learn from each other by sharing information and experiences. Using this theory I’ve tried to group my learners according to some similarities towards their learning styles and interests. And finally Kolb’s (1984) Experiential Learning Cycle had helped me in my lesson plans to stage the objective in the form of experience, observation, reflection and then again planning for a new learning session. The entire journey has been a re-learning mode for me where I have also learnt how to make my class more Inclusive by using differentiation techniques in tasks and

I’d never thought of the importance of formative assessment. That it could be applied on a daily basis in the lesson and that the activity itself could be devised in such a way that it could be taken as a formative assessment itself and could be assessed using simple rubrics. So, now any activity I plan – I first check whether it is possible for me to assess my learner through that activity? If not, can I change the same so that assessment is included as a part of it? Also, before I used to think that assessment is only in the form of a paper and pen test. But now being aware of the different learning styles, I try to use not just worksheets as assessment but even video for visual learners, questions to discuss and answer for audio learners, and the activity which requires some hands on experience for my kinaesthetic learners. I use observation techniques to assess their understanding