KOLB’S LEARNING STYLE INSTRUMENT:
SENSITIVE TO GENDER
CHRISTINE R. BREW
La Trobe University
Kolb’s experiential learning theory, developed in the 1970s, continues to be influential in
the educational and management fields. To complement his theory, Kolb developed a
learning style preference instrument (LSI) that has been continually hampered by poor
psychometric performance. Whether these problems are due to poorly differentiated theory
and/or instrument error has been the focus of debate. The principal finding reported
in the present study is that the LSI, as modified byKolb in 1985, is gender sensitive for an
Australian cohort of 1st-year university students. For females, the results of a factor analysis
were consistent withKolb’s theory. For males, the results were consistent with previous
studies that found the instrument yielded scores with poor construct validity.