Learning Styles

Week One



After reading a vast amount on learning styles (for both this, and other courses) it's clear that one of the biggest challenges for teachers is ensuring that their lesson structure caters for learners on all ends of the spectrum. One point that I found very clarifying was in a reading by Roy Killen called 'Effective Teaching Strategies: Lessons from Research and Practice', which states that each learner will have a collection of learning styles and will like to learn some content in one way, and some content in another. He also stresses the importance of not confusing learning styles with ability. He states that "an ability refers to how well someone can do something. A style refers to how someone likes to do something" (2003). I think that this is a vital concept to take into consideration in the classroom, particularly as the reading cited that research studies have shown that differences in ability are only accountable for about 20% of the variation of academic success.



Taking this into account, teachers must employ strategies that cater for different learning styles and use a wide collection of techniques (such as visual resources, oral interaction, and written instructions to name a few). They must also be sure to monitor each students progress to ascertain which learning style they tend to lean towards in which situations in order to best facilitate their learning experiences.



I took the Index of Learning Styles questionnaire by Felder and Solomon which works to identify a persons preferred learning style within four sub-styles:

Active vs Reflective Learners
Sensing and Intuitive Learners
Visuall vs Verbal Learners
Sequential vs Global Learners


I found that I scored highly towards being a Reflective learner, was balanced between Sensing and Intuitive, scored much higher on Verbal than Visual, and lent slightly toward the Global end of the scale. (If you wish to take the questionnaire, click here).



My results weren't particularly surprising to me; I've always been a massive reader and writer, am an avid note-taker and love learning concepts and ideas (hence my previous Psych degree; while there are concrete facts, much of Psychology and Sociology focuses on abstract concepts).