Scott's Learning Cycle

Many of my readers (quite possibly all three of you) will be familiar with Kolb's learning cycle.  It's a neat way of suggesting how we learn from experience, and reminds us to attend to various aspects of that when we are learning or helping someone else to learn. 

But recently I suffered a tragedy: the rear derailleur on my bike broke, and the bike shop said it was beyond economic repair.  In fact they went further and declared my bike dead on arrival, or as they put it, 'not possible to repair...not safe to ride... corrosion... deep into every bike component.' 

And as a way of mourning - and honouring - the passing of this bike, I thought I would reflect on how much it has helped me to learn, over the years: a bike I will fondly remember as my Learning Cycle.

Avid readers will remember how it helped me to become smarter than Sherlock Holmes, for example.  And how a fall from my bike helped me to recognise how I was developing my Inner Supervisor. 

You may also remember when I acquired the bike, a decade or so back, by dint of the excellent material on Negotiating Skills from Harvard (Getting to Yes) that I both teach and (on this as so many occasions) use myself.

But more profoundly, the bike has been part of my discipline, both of keeping fit and of learning, for many years now.  In this blog post, I reflect on that, including:

'Thus the discipline of getting out on my bike first thing every morning and cycling up the fells, come rain or shine, frees me in unexpected ways. At one level it is the obvious thing: being fitter makes me less prone to bugs, and being physically tired means I sleep well at night, free of insomnia. But it also frees me from rumination: I process a lot of thinking as I cycle.'

But, alas, my learning cycle is no more; but its legacy, in terms of the learning itself, will live on.

And I collect a new bike tomorrow (by which time I hope that they will have put the pedals on).

But what, asks Prodnose, has any of this to do with Kolb's Learning Cycle? to which I can only reply that such a question reflects a lack of abstract conceptualisation that shames him, before I hop on my bike and cycle off into the sunset...