How do you learn best?

The importance of how a student learns, in addition to what is learned, is the foundation for the case for determining the dominant learning style of each student and then modifying instruction accordingly. Instructional design should accommodate the identified learning styles in each classroom. You might have a class in which all of the learning styles and multiple intelligences are represented or certain ones but not others. Increasingly, learning styles and multiple intelligences are being grouped together in research and critical literature. As you create your lesson plans, the objectives should be obtainable with competency by means of stimuli that affect learning through a choice of activities directed at these learning styles. In a unit of instruction, all of the learning styles should be included in the lessons so that every student can achieve recognition and success in the learning community. Because eight or more multiple intelligences are now recognized, with potentially more to come, as well as three or four learning styles (depending on the theorist who is referenced), it is impractical to include activities for each intelligence and style in every lesson plan. It is pedagogically imperative, however, to incorporate evaluated activities that, over the course of the unit, will allow each student to shine in an acknowledged performance directed at the learning style strengths identified in the classroom.

As teachers, you should keep in mind that students' learning style preferences will not always be clearly identifiable and that more than one learning style may be manifest at different times. Children especially may have vacillating and unclear preferences as they experiment with different learning experiences. It is therefore of the utmost importance that participation in learning activities that tap into all the learning style stimuli be offered to these young people as they develop a mature learning style dominance.

Furthermore, you will encounter a considerable body of literature that maintains that learning styles/multiple intelligences theory is frontier science, not consensus science. If you keep an open mind about this controversy, you will find it interesting to observe the responses you generate in your classroom by offering activities to engage the perceived differences in learning modalities.

Activity

After reviewing at least three of the instruments listed below or others that you find, decide which learning style instrument you would find most useful to use when you teach. In a brief summary, describe the instrument, where it can be found or purchased, and why you would select it over others.

Want to know more? Check out these sites:

http://www.teach-nology.com/currenttrends/learning_styles

http://www.monroe.k12.fl.us/ls/default.htm

http://www.redp.com/learning_style.html

http://www.enhancelearning.ca

http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/succeed/04-learningstyles.html

http://www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/tid/resources/montgomery.html

http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html

http://www.d.umn.edu/student/loon/acad/strat/lrnsty.html

http://www.indstate.edu/ctl/styles/ls1.html