Adult Learning and Discourse

Is my resistance based on a post-modernist aversion to being objectified/ named/ reduced to a typology? Is it based on the glib (and rarely supported with data) claim that these styles are not situated but generalize to any and all contexts? Maybe I resist because I do not want to address areas of weakness? Or because of past scars…

When I was working for the Bureau of Prisons, I took a leadership course in which the MMPI was administered. I actually enjoyed the training and liked the instructor, but, just like with the Kolb, I resisted being labeled as a thinking-sensing-doing-feeling LMNOP-er. But it was all rather amusing (and interesting) until a few months later when I was participating in the dreaded annual refresher training (ART) with about 200 other BOP central office employees. My old MMPI instructor happened to be conducting this ART session too, and she proceeded to blow my cover to the others in the class: “Oh, here is the Bureau’s one and only LMNOP-er!” (I do not remember what type I was, but apparently the Bureau didn’t hire many like me at the time.)  Then she started asking me weird questions that should have been funny, like, “Do you fold your underwear or just throw it in a drawer?” “What color are your wife’s pajamas?” I guess I was taking myself too seriously, because, I felt naked in front of 200 people. I bristled. I’m sure she meant this to be playful; I was the killjoy…

So, there’s that little scar…

Now that that’s off my chest, I want to be clear to the class: I do find enormous benefit to the Kolb cycle. And, as well, the ideas about divergent, convergent, assimilating and accommodating approaches to learning. I hope you do too. And to the extent the learning styles exercise helped expand (or challenge) your schema for adult learning, then I am happy. For me, I’m definitely going to work on my inner-assimilator…

B.