ABSTRACT
There have been numerous attempts to classify the basic ways in which cognitive or learning styles differ. Messick and associates (1978) identify nineteen types of learning styles, each type being supported by a range of research articles and theoretical papers, and Smith (1984) tabulates seventeen learning style inventories. Squires (1981) observes that cognitive styles are typically represented as polar opposites of a single dimension so that a person is described as field dependent or independent, reflective or impulsive, serialist or holist, a converger or a diverger, and so on. These varied approaches to cognitive style should not be seen as mutually exclusive, rather they support the reasonable expectation that people differ in their learning styles in a number of ways. Because of this it would be naïve to expect that adult educators could systematically design and deliver a course to fit the learning style needs of their students. This chapter, in part, addresses the issue of how learning style information should be used in the adult classroom. However, this will be done in the context of describing and evaluating two dominant approaches to categorising cognitive styles, the field dependence/ independence dimension identified by Witkin, and the Learning Style Inventory developed by Kolb and Fry.
