Role of Learning Styles and Theories in Training and Development

HUMAN RESOURCE
DEPARTMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................3
TASK 1.......................................................................................................................................................3
1.1............................................................................................................................................................3
1.2............................................................................................................................................................4
1.3............................................................................................................................................................5
4.1............................................................................................................................................................5
4.2............................................................................................................................................................6
4.3............................................................................................................................................................7
TASK 2.......................................................................................................................................................8
2.1............................................................................................................................................................8
2.2............................................................................................................................................................8
2.3............................................................................................................................................................9
3.1..........................................................................................................................................................10
3.2..........................................................................................................................................................10
3.3..........................................................................................................................................................11
CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Human resource department (HRD) is an approach which helps individuals in an enterprise to
develop their skills, abilities and knowledge. It plays an important role in providing training and
development program. This report presents different learning styles, theories, role of learning curve and
importance of transferring to actual workplace. It also represents various training needs and methods used
by Sun Court Ltd. to improve its working efficiency. People R Us is a small consultancy firm which
advises Sun Court Ltd. on various issues regarding HR department (Fee, 2014). Through this study
learner will be able to understand process of development of training and evaluation to know its
effectiveness. It will also describe the role of UK government in various training and development events
of Sun Court Ltd.
TASK 1
1.1
Learning means acquiring and modifying skills, knowledge, attitude, behavior, preferences and
values. Learning styles are such methods through which above things are gained by human beings.
Different styles are used by different companies to educate their staff or employees to achieve their
targets. These are as follows:
Kolb’s learning styles
There are four styles which are suggested by David Kolb i.e. converging, diverging, assimilating
and accommodating. These are discussed as under:
 Converging: This learning style does not focus on people but use the abstract concepts, practical
and experimental ideas.
 Diverging: Under this people first observe things rather than implementing them in real. This
focuses more on people instead of practicing it.
 Assimilating: Here, human beings gain a logical knowledge of doing work effectively at
workplace. It is used for those individuals who are engaged in research and inventions.
 Accommodating: It is totally different from all above styles because in this learners learn things
by looking and observing other persons (Kehoe and Wright, 2013). This learning style does not
required any practical, experimental and logical explanation.
Honey and Mumford’s styles

They also suggested four different learning styles such as activists, reflector, theorist and
pragmatist which are explained as under:
 Activists: This style is used to educate those persons who want to practice new things and are
ready to face any consequences or issues involved in that.
 Reflector: It is generally used by many organizations because it includes learning things not only
collecting data from their own but also from different opinions of other individuals.
 Theorist: Persons who want to formulate their own theories by their observations and
experiments follow this style of learning. It is quite similar to assimilating learning style because
here also people think logically.
 Pragmatics: Here, new ideas, thoughts and theories are experimented and implemented.
Solutions are made to overcome from various difficulties and problems.
1.2
Learning curve has a significant impact on the process of learning which reflect performance of
learners. It is very important to transfer learning in real world or workplace to know its effectiveness.
Role of learning curve
Learning curve is a graphical presentation which shows decrease and increase of performance and
experience of person (Sparrow, Brewster and Chung, 2016). It is an important technique through which
impact of learning program may be analyzed. Through this graphical representation, relationship between
time spent in learning activities and competency level of individuals are shown. Therefore, this curve
represents progress of people or learners. This curve is used by management of Sun Court Ltd. to
overlook at performance level of their employees.
Importance of transferring learning to workplace
Every enterprise facilitates training and development program to train their employees to perform
their job efficiently. Sun Court Ltd. also provides these learning sessions for their workforce therefore, it
is necessary to transfer this to workplace to know its effectiveness. There are following importance of this
transferring:
 Optimum utilization of funds: Providing training is not so easy task for every firm because an
effective learning program requires lots of funding. If learning is not transferred to the workplace
then all spending on it will go in vain so it is very important to move it to business operations of
Sun Court Ltd.