Learning Style
Learning styles are characteristic cognitive, affective and physiological behaviours that serve as relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with and respond to the learning environment.
Extensive research into learning styles has helped in the understanding of the learning process. As each learner with a specific learning difficulty is an individual, each learner has an individual learning style. All teachers need to understand the concept of individual learning styles and learn to be flexible in their teaching styles. This is a more positive and productive way of conceptualizing a specific learning difficulty, not as a disability, but rather as a different learning ability, a specific learning style. In this conceptualization, awareness and early recognition, appropriate intervention and lifelong support and accommodation can help prevent a specific learning difficulty from being a disability.
The recent interest and research into learning styles is based on three concepts: (1) individuals prefer to learn in different ways and under different circumstances, (2) these preferences can be identified and (3) the manner of instruction affects student learning.
Learning styles incorporate five variables:
1. Environmental variables, including sound level, temperature, light and seating design;
2. Emotional variables, including motivation, persistence, responsibility and structure;
3. Sociological variables, including learning alone, in pairs or with peers, as part of a team, with adults or mixed situations;
4. Physiological variables, including perceptional processes, diet and time factors and mobility;
5. Psychological variables, including global and analytical preferences, hemispheric ally, impulsive vs. reflective behavior.
Teachers should:
1. Take account of the range of learning styles their students will inevitably exhibit
2. Recognize that their own learning style is likely to be reflected in their teaching
3. Acknowledge the dangers of allowing one particular approach to teaching to exclude the voice of others
4. Help their students to identify their own learning styles with a view to them being able to develop their strengths still further, but also extend the range of their learning repertoire by attending to those aspects of their style which hold them back or cause frustration.
People who are left brain dominant and therefore sequential thinkers may be Concrete in their thinking style and be strong in linear processing, be more detail-oriented, learn through analysis and need quiet to concentrate, or may be Abstract in their learning style and exercise with logic, need full background information, be intensely analytic and strive for structure. People who are right brain dominant and therefore random thinkers may be Concrete in their learning style and be divergent thinkers, need time control, need variety and need support, or may be Abstract in their learning style and be attuned to nuance, experience events holistically, be visual and have a natural ability to collaborate.
Research suggests that teachers tend to be left brain dominant sequential thinkers whereas learners with A specific learning difficulty may experience difficulty processing information on the left side of the brain and therefore tend to use the right side more. Frequently, any skills or abilities they exhibit tend to be controlled by the right side of the brain.
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Last Updated 9/2/2007