Making sense together: participatory sensemaking, learning cycles, and group roles.
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2026 Christian Kronsted, Matthew Henley, Miriam Giguere
The Kolb Learning Cycle describes experiential learning through four phases: experimentation, concretization, observation, and conceptualization. This article extends the model by integrating 4E cognition (embodied, enactive, embedded, extended), group role theory, ecological psychology, and participatory sense-making. The authors argue that as individuals cycle through group roles—leader, follower, naysayer, observer—they shift into different Kolb phases, which changes the group's emergent dynamics. Social interaction thus drives the learning cycle. Because individual behavior emerges from group processes, reductive explanations of group learning as the sum of individual contributions are inadequate; instead, the group itself is considered a cognitive system that drives learning.