Individual learning styles, preferences, and strategies

[Dheerayupa]

Thanks a million, Venerable!

[Dheerayupa]

@Gillian

The discussion in this thread ranges across learning styles and strategies, so I’m about to edit the tread title to reflect the shifts in discussion. I trust you have no objection

No worries

Also, it doesn’t matter what people ‘think’. If there exist individual inherent styles, they exist. If not, they don’t. Gravity is always on this planet Earth (for the time being) no matter whether human beings are aware of it.

no point debating.

The thread, IMHO, is to encourage people to explore ways/methods that make it easy or easier for them to understand and retain certain types of knowledge. That is useful.

[Dheerayupa]

@Gillian

This paper (and the orientation of the other is similar) seems to me not to attack the notion of learning styles per se, but rather the effectiveness of teachers taking perceived (or claimed – there’s a difference) learning style into account when choosing pedagogical strategies.

First of all, I don’t have time to read the said paper. so, if I sound irrelevant, my apologies.

The point about exploring and being aware of learning styles either of oneself or of one’s students is to remind one that we are all different. I did research on this particular subject for my master’s degree not to find ‘one’ method to teach my students, but to be aware that my class consisted of individuals with diverse styles and preferences; hence, my teaching methods should be as various as possible to help most, if not all, students and should promote clarity of the subject being taught while holding my students’ attention (my male students did lots of physical exercise and tended to fall asleep so easily).

[Gillian]

Yes, from the teachers’ point of view I totally agree, and I used to encourage my Masters students to take the same approach.

As a learner, now towards the end of my life, I observe that some things my mind does have been with me almost as long as I can remember but other new ways of doing mental tasks are emerging now. They are likely less efficient, but I don’t really know.

As @JStewart says, a great many studies are done on university students, and long ago one of my own lecturers laughed this off as being because students are easy to recruit as guinea pigs as in most psychology departments they can earn course credits for taking part. On the other hand, I’m sure that the research into childhood learning isn’t diminishing, and I would like to see studies on really mature learners as well.