Learning Styles

1
Learning Styles

• How do you learn?
• What are the variety of
• ways you take in, store,
• and
• retrieve
• information?

2
???

• Have you ever been unhappy in a class that is
  just delivered through lectures?
• Do you have a boss who wanted you to learn
  procedures by reading a manual?
• Do you have a spouse who insists on jumping into
  a project without planning it out first?
• Does your child tackle his/her homework
  differently than you would?

3
By knowing their style, people have seen changes
in their relationships

• Dealing with family members who seem to march to
  a different drummer
• Helping leaders deal with unrealistic
  expectations
• Facilitating work teams be more productive
• Teaching has become more responsive

4
Why is this important?

• Knowing how we learn is key to getting the most
  out of our educational process
• Thinking about our past learning experiences may
  reveal more about how we learn now
• Knowing how your teachers and bosses think about
  learning may help you succeed in class and work
  more successfully
• You will know yourself, accept others more fully,
  lead a more freed up life and be more
  productive (Zacharias)

5

• Maybe the answer to why you have problems at home
  and work is because you have different ways of
  learning new information. Your learning styles
  may be different than the person you are working
  with.
• Much has been written about learning styles.
• You may have recently taken a Learning Style
  Inventory.

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How Are Learning Styles Measured?

• Sensory Learning Modalities
• Brain research
• Environmental factors
• Learning Style Inventory (David Kolb)
• Myers Briggs Inventory
• Multiple Intelligences
• Others

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Sensory Modalities

• Auditory
• Visual
• Kinesthetic

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Sensory Modalities-Auditory

• LEARN BY LISTENING
• 30 of learners
• Learn from verbal instruction
• Need phonics
• Enjoys plays, books on tape
• Games and pictures are annoying
• Remembers names not faces
• Remembers by listening, especially music

9
Sensory Modalities-Visual

• SEEING AND WRITING
• 40 of learners
• Can be verbal (sees words) or pictorial (see
  pictures)
• Remembers faces but not names
• Vivid imagination
• Thinks in pictures
• Facial expressions tells what their emotions are
• Uses color
• TV, movies, video games can be addicting!

10
Sensory Modalities-Kinesthetic

• LARGE MOTOR, WHOLE BODY LEARNING
• Learn by doing
• Not avid reader
• Poor speller
• Remember what was done, not seen or talked about
• Does not hear things as well
• Touch is important
• Attacks things physically-fight, hit, pound
• Impulsive
• Needs math and science manipulatives
• Loves games
• Needs to move in the classroom

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Brain Research

• Left-brained/right-brained differences
• LEFT (ANALYTIC LEARNER)
• words, numbers, parts, sequential, linear,
  detail, verbal, punctual, organized)
• RIGHT (GLOBAL LEARNER)
• images, patterns, wholes, simultaneous,
  patterns, whole picture, non-verbal, without
  sense of time, creative, intuitive, spontaneous)
• Gender differences have been documented-females
  excel in language skills, males spatial skills

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Myers Briggs Inventory

• Indicator questions deal with the way you like to
  use your perceptions and judgment-the way you
  like to look things and the way you like to go
  about deciding things
• Measures personality type
• Extraversion-Introversion
• Sensing-Intuition
• Thinking-Feeling
• Judging-Perceptive

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Implications of MBTI

• 60 of women prefer the feeling mode of
  decision-making and a more personal and
  collaborative classroom 60 of men prefer
  thinking mode
• The thinking mode predominates in college and
  universities especially in male-dominated fields
• 60 of women who demonstrate a preference for
  feeling may well be disadvantaged in many
  classrooms

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If your instructor is ENFP, what does that mean
for you?

• E-relates more easily to the outer world of
  people and things than to the inner world of
  ideas
• N-would rather looks for possibilities and
  relationships than work with known facts
• F-base judgments more on personal values than on
  impersonal analysis and logic
• P-flexible, spontaneous way of life better than a
  planned, decided, orderly way

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Learning Style Inventory(LSI)

• Based on research of David Kolb, a prominent
  expert in experiential learning
• Measures how you perceive new information and the
  way we process what we perceive
• Can pinpoint strengths and weaknesses of
  learning preference
• Can help with career decisions
• Not an indicator of ability but preference and
  ease of learning a task

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Environmental Factors

• Expectations
• Teachers values, rewards
• Institutions and their culture
• Others?

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Others

• Creative styles inventory
• 4-Mat system (dynamic, innovative, common sense,
  analytic)
• Adaptive style inventory (Bill Clinton scored
  well on this one)
• Witkin field independence/field sensitive
• Womens Ways of Knowing-connected knowledge
• Gardner Multiple Intelligences

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Knowing how you learn just might help you
succeed at home, at work, at school and in your
relationships
Developed by Jan Dreogkamp 8/00