Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle C6: Learning spiral: organise learning as recurring cycles that deepen and transfer

A course or curriculum is organised as a series of learning cycles forming a spiral: the modes are revisited, each pass deepens and extends understanding, and learners carry what they learned in one situation into another to find its limits and wider uses. Kolb stresses that the cycle is a spiral rather than a closed circle, that learning is an endlessly recurring exchange between the learner and the environment (taking in and putting out, impression and expression), and that recursive repetition, as in the demonstration-practice-production-critique rhythm of art education, is what builds expertise. The New Zealand middle-school curriculum is his example of the spiral as a design framework.