LEARNING STYLES

CONTENTS: Brief review of learning styles models, including instructional preference, social interaction, information processing, and personality models.

SOURCE: Indiana State University Center for Teaching and Learning, Learning Styles site. (http://web.indstate.edu/ctl/styles/model2.html) Adapted for NTLF June 1999.

1. Instructional Preference Models

Dunn and Dunn
An effort to provide an integrative collection of many levels of style differences, Dunn and Dunn draw on characteristics at multiple levels in devising instructional settings. By assessing students and learning environments along each of these levels, Dunn and Dunn describe ways in which all different kinds of students can be accommodated.

1. Environmental preferences regarding sound, light, temperature, & class design;
2. Emotional preferences addressing motivation, persistence, responsibility & structure;
3. Sociological preferences for private, pair, peer, team, adult or varied learning relations;
4. Psychological preference related to perception, intake, time, & mobility; and
5. Psychological preferences based on analytic mode, hemesphericity, & action.

Reichmann and Grasha
A careful study of student approaches to learning led Grasha and Reichmann to develop a set of student learner types that indicate the likely attitudes, habits and strategies students will take toward their work. By becoming aware of these categories, Grasha indicates ways in which teachers can adjust their teaching styles to create better connections with various types of students.

2. Social Interaction Models

Perry Model
William Perry claimed that individuals went through four stages of development during their college years.

Stage 1 is called the Dualism stage because students tend to divide the world into right/wrong, true/false good/bad dichotomies. Students view the teacher as right and that the student's role is to give the teacher back what they have received. They are frustrated when asked to listen to other students opinions (since they are likely to be wrong) and content when the teacher is clear and comfortable in lectures and assignments.

Stage 2 is called the Multiplicity stage because students have come to realize that other than a few dualistic areas, most knowledge is a matter of opinion and, therefore, any opinion is knowledgeable. The student's role is to offer their ideas. They are frustrated when they find requirements restrict them and content when allowed to express themselves.

Stage 3 is called the Contextual Relativism stage. Student recognize that there are disciplinary guidelines for choosing among various opinions. They accept that it is the student's role to apply the skills and knowledge base of the academic field. They are frustrated when arbitrary opinions seem to rule and content when they have the information they need to use to form a solid judgment.

Stage 4 is called the Commitment within Contextual Relativism stage. In it, students connect their disciplinary skills to new settings and see the need to apply knowledge and skills to settings outside the classroom. They are frustrated by activities that cover content without knowing relevant applications and content when allowed to apply ideas to everyday problems.

Belenky
After studying women learners, Belenky, et al. described certain strategies that learners would use according to the social and pedagogical setting. They listed the following steps:

1. Received Knowledge is a strategy when students listen and accept external authorities. They are not aware of how they create their own knowledge and prefer to give back to instructors what was given to them.
2. Subjective Knowledge is a strategy in which students recognize their own ability to construct knowledge but keep their ideas and position to themselves. Knowledge is private and personal. They may distrust authoritarian presentations of knowledge.
3. Procedural Knowledge describes strategies for following disciplinary routines (or intellectual habits of mind) to analyze and interpret experiences and events. These knowers are willing to try to understand others' perspectives.
4. Constructed Knowledge are strategies for applying knowledge in context. The student realizes that she/he can create knowledge skillfully by responding to both objective and subjective qualities in the process.

Baxter Magolda
Marcia Baxter Magolda has, in a sense, aimed to integrate Perry and Belenky by reconceptualizing stages of development and preferred interactional styles as cognitive strategies that students are likely to use given their age and gender as well as the social expectations of the setting. She recognizes four stages with several variations within these stages.

1. Absolute Knowers are extremely common in early college student. Like Perry's dualists, they grant that the teacher has all the right answers and that the student's duty is to get it right. These students appreciate efforts by faculty to be friendly and open so that it is easier to find out what is expected.
2. Transitional Knowers use absolutist strategies in some areas (like sciences) but realize that their own capacity for interpretation is important in other areas. They can be encouraged to experiment with their own views (some variations are more public than others) but, ultimately want assurances that they are close to a correct (or correct enough).
3. Independent Knowers know that knowledge is open to many interpretations. Students are aware (again, in different ways) of the need for their own personal approach to interpreting information, theories, and experiences.
4. Contextual Knowers are those who become comfortable judging how their knowledge base and skills might apply to a situation. They can connect concepts to applied settings.

3. Informational Processing Models

Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle
Kolb outlined a two axis grid. On the horizontal axis he discriminated between Reflective Observation and Active Experimentation. The vertical axis separates those who prefer Concrete Experience or Abstract Conceptualization. By looking at the quadrants, it is possible to identify "types" of people as divergers, accommodators, assimilators, and convergers. Teaching to these type is one response to Kolb's model. More often, however, Kolb sees the teacher as cycling students through each of these quadrants in order to develop comprehensive units. A popular program that develops from Kolb's idea is 4MAT which provides specific techniques for addressing the quadrants and the learning cycle.

Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Gardner claims that every individual has different abilities in each of seven areas: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Because schools emphasize the first two areas, students are not often allowed to use and develop the other areas as ways to understand material. Providing alternative educational activities allows teachers to engage multiple intelligences and increases the number of ways students can learn.

Gregoric Mind Styles
Gregoric sorts people along two continua: abstract-concrete and sequential-random. By graphing results on an x-y graph, people can find their relative strengths as abstract-sequential, abstract-random, concrete-sequential, concrete-random. People may have various combinations of strengths, from being predominately one or two styles to a balance among all four. Because each quadrant has specific characteristics, Gregoric's system allows teachers to recognizes each type and adjust lessons so that they can be approached accordingly.

4. Personality Models

Myers Briggs Type Indicator
The most widely used personality model is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. A revision of Carl Jung's categorization of types of people, the Myers Briggs system uses four pairs of qualities to characterize people according to sixteen types. Each of these types has a primary orientation toward the world, one which affects their ability to learn and to work. Educators using this model recommend ways to create educational settings in which various types can be successful.

Witkin
Witkin recognized that a person's ability to extract details from a context becomes an important indicator of how the person approaches (and interprets) the world. This discrimination between global and analytic types is often incorporated in other learning style models.