Kolb's experiential learning cycle

Kolb holds that learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience, and models it as a four-stage cycle: concrete experience → reflective observation → abstract conceptualisation → active experimentation, and round again.

Two things must be kept strictly apart here, because conflating them is what makes the framework collapse. First, the Learning Style Inventory. It is ipsative (forced-choice ranking), so the four scale scores are interdependent, the factor structure is unstable, and the instrument can only report which style is relatively dominant, not how strongly. Coffield and colleagues' systematic review (2004) judged learning-styles instruments, the LSI among them, to lack adequate reliability and validity.

Second — and this is the important one — the so-called meshing hypothesis, that instruction should be matched to a student's measured style, has been refuted: Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer and Bjork (2008, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119) found essentially no adequately designed studies supporting it.

The cycle itself as a reflection structure is a separate question, and the honest answer is that there is little evidence in either direction: we could not find a meta-analysis testing the cycle as a debrief scaffold. There is a theoretical critique of the model's internal coherence (Bergsteiner, Avery & Neumann, 2010, Studies in Continuing Education, 32(1), 29–46). So we use the cycle as a pedagogical scaffold — not as a proven mechanism.

Licensing: the cycle itself is free to cite and describe; the KLSI and its successor KELP are licensed instruments (through Experience Based Learning Systems / the Institute for Experiential Learning, with the older 3.x versions through Korn Ferry). gslk uses no style inventory and labels no student with a style.