Comparison of pediatric resident and faculty learning styles: implications for medical education

This article compares resident and faculty learning strategies and styles and considers implications for teaching. The Kolb Learning Style Inventory was administered to 17 pediatric residents and 22 faculty in a pediatric department of an urban university-affiliated public medical center in 1991. Four scales--concrete experience (CE), reflective observation (RO), abstract conceptualization (AC), and active experimentation (AE)--are derived from self-ranking groups of words. Combining strategies leads to one of four styles: accommodator, diverger, converger, or assimilator. Analysis of variance and chi-square statistics were used to analyze strongest strategies and styles and to compare groups. It was found that resident and faculty preferred learning strategies and styles were significantly different. Resident strategies were spread primarily between concrete experience (40.5%) and active experimentation (40.5%), whereas faculty clearly preferred abstract conceptualization (77%). Most residents had either an accommodator or diverger learning style (81%), whereas most faculty were either assimilators or convergers (73%). This knowledge of learning strategy preferences and styles may have implications for design and delivery of instruction to residents.