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Article Excerpt
Abstract: This paper investigates learning processes across a built environment design curriculum through the recognition of the four learning styles defined in the experiential learning theory of Kolb, i.e., 'accommodating', 'diverging', 'assimilating' and 'converging.' The paper focuses on the results of a cross-curriculum learning style survey. The results of the survey appear to explain why many prior studies of the personality characteristics, learning and cognitive styles of practitioners and of design students at different stages of their education appear conflicting. The hypothesis tested to resolve these inconsistencies asked whether design-learning styles are fixed or change as students' progress through their studies. The survey provides evidence of a statistically significant relationship between learning styles and year of study. The evidence suggests a southern drift (the term refers to the spatial interrelationship of styles in the two-dimensional Kolb Learning Style Index [LSI] cycle) towards the abstract conceptualisation mode of the learning process as students near the completion of their studies. This fluidity in learning style remains a hypothesis until further research is able to study one cohort for the entirety of a degree program. The paper argues that the possibility of learning style fluidity needs determining if learning style theory is to provide a workable model for informing the teaching of architecture.
Keywords: Architectural education, Design, Learning styles, Pedagogy
Learning Style Differences among Architecture Students
To explore the relationships between different learning styles and teaching approaches in design education, the research introduced in this paper has focused on design studio teaching through the recognition of reported learning styles. The conceptual frame adopted in this is the most commonly applied learning model to design education research, namely the 'accommodating', 'diverging', 'assimilating' and 'converging' categories defined in the experiential learning theory of Kolb (1984). The research recognises that, as Dunn, Grigg, Olsen, Beasley and Gorman (1995) have shown, students whose learning styles are accommodated in teaching methodologies are typified by learning achievements far higher than students whose styles are not accommodated.
This paper is restricted to an analysis of the results of a cross-curriculum learning style survey conducted in the preliminary stages of our research. The survey aimed to determine the effects of the prime variables known to inform learning styles amongst tertiary students; namely, culture, socio-economic background, gender, course of study and higher education learning experience. This paper is restricted to an examination of the impact on learning styles of only the latter two of these variables: course of study and higher education learning experience. We will investigate through this examination a question that is central to current debate on how learning styles might inform teaching. For in order to speculate on whether and how studio group teaching can respond to learning style differences, or, on the other hand, on whether the problems of learning style differences in groups can be resolved by changes in studio teaching, it is first required to determine if architecture students' learning styles respond to changes in teaching. In other words, is there fluidity in the learning styles of architecture students? Although much has been written on whether learning styles are fixed or fluid (eg, Bloomer & Hodkinson, 2000; Curry, 1983, 1990; Freeman & Stumpf, 1980; Reynolds, 1997), the question has been largely neglected by researchers of design teaching. This neglect might explain apparent inconsistencies in pedagogical research indicating that the learning styles of architectural practitioners, educators and students at different stages of their education may be quite different.
Before moving on in this paper to consider the possibility of learning-style fluidity in design students, it will be necessary first to contextualise this enquiry through a brief overview of learning style theory and learning style research in design education.
Learning Styles and Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory
It has been argued that individuals' habitual information processing models (or what have been categorised by researchers as cognitive styles) determine their learning behaviours (learning styles) and inform predispositions (learning preferences) and responses towards particular aspects of the learning environment (learning strategies; e.g., Curry, 1983; Riding & Rayner, 1998; Sadler-Smith & Smith, 2004). The idea of a style reflecting a person's habitual mode of problem-solving, thinking, perceiving, and remembering was initially introduced by Allport (1937). Since then, researchers have, with the ultimate aim of tailoring teaching methods to student learning preferences, developed various theories for defining and categorising the learning and teaching styles of individuals, and for explaining the relationships between cognitive styles, learning styles and learning preferences (Curry, 1983; Kagan & Kogan, 1970; Riding & Cheema, 1991; Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1997).
In an examination of the research on learning styles, Grigorenko and Sternberg (1995) found three general approaches. The first approach is cognition-centred and deals with cognitive styles. The second approach is personality-centred, such as the theory of Myers and Myers (1980) that is based on the work of Jung (1921). The third approach is activity-centred and focuses on styles of learning and teaching. Kolb adopted the third approach when he applied Piaget's (1972) theory to identify a number of commonly used learning and teaching preferences and whether each was helpful to a particular learning style. Kolb argued that students must physically interact with study material to understand it completely (1984). Physical interaction then gives rise to learning in a continuous cycle in which the student forms abstract concepts, tests the implications of these concepts in new situations via concrete experience and then reflects on what they have observed. The next time students come upon the same situation they will utilise the knowledge gained during the first cycle to move on to experiences that are more complex. The Kolb cycle and the positive feedback loop central to it are familiar to design students; for, as Stumpf (2001) argued, they echo the cyclical process of reading, questioning and argument, testing, and reformulating--of reflection-in-action and then reflection-on-action--that is characteristic of design progression. Kolb argued for the adoption of experiential learning strategies throughout education by the use of teaching models that help students move round the learning cycle to achieve 'deep' learning. Although architectural education has yet to acknowledge the Kolb cycle explicitly as a pedagogical theory that underpins its teaching frameworks, it is clear, as Webster (2001) pointed out, that design teaching promotes experiential learning in much the same way as other fields of professional education. It is perhaps fitting, therefore, that Kolb's model has been utilised most commonly by researchers evaluating the learning styles of design students. In order to draw upon and evaluate this earlier research, in our study the Kolb model and its testing instrument the Learning Style Inventory (LSI) was utilised. The pedagogical aim of the LSI within the...
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