Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle P4: Learning as holistic adaptation across settings and life stages

What does P4 require?

Learning involves the integrated functioning of the whole person, thinking, feeling, perceiving and behaving, and is the chief way humans adapt, in every setting, from school to the workplace and the board room, and at every life stage. It subsumes more specialised adaptive processes such as problem solving, decision making, creativity and scientific inquiry, which share the cycle's shape, and it sits on a continuum with performance (short-term adaptation) and development (lifelong adaptation). The practice implied is to design learning that bridges formal learning and work and addresses affective, perceptual, cognitive and behavioural outcomes.