Learning Styles—What are they?

Imagine you win a trip to Rome.  After your initial celebration of your windfall, how do you approach how your travel will look?  Do you read, study, and investigate Roman attractions prior to your trip then make a step-by-step plan of your itinerary? All of these activities together lead you to an understanding of your view and understanding of Rome.  Or do you watch videos of all sorts of activities and adventures to get an overall feel for what this amazing city offers, and then make your plans, choosing activities that will give you the best overall “flavor”?  If the latter, you may even hop off the plane and immerse yourself in Roman Culture, allowing it to seep into you until you grasp an understanding of what the city beholds for you, then further decide your plan of attack on learning more about the city.

Which of these do you choose?  Actually, your choice may reveal more than just how you prefer to travel; it indicates your preferred style of learning.

Do you ever think…..about how you think?  When students encounter new learning opportunities, their brains respond differently.  No two students ever process information in exactly the same way.  This may seem daunting to a teacher, especially looking out and seeing 28+ minds anticipating new knowledge to be processed! However, by first empowering students to be aware of the “how” of their learning, they will be able to get maximum benefit out of any presentation, even if it’s not necessarily their immediate learning style.

What are these unique learning styles?  Well, we’ll give you a very brief overview here—a few words on a  blog are much too short of time to delve into the intricate workings of our amazing minds.  Hopefully this will spark an interest in you to capture the knowledge of YOUR “how”, and begin a journey of adapting your thinking to accommodate content that is presented to you, no matter how far away from your learning style it is.

Let’s use the above example of travel.  If you picked the option of first planning a step-by-step itinerary prior to your Rome adventure, you may be a sequential learner.  Sequential learners need to understand steps and processes before being able to understand a complete concept.  If any step on the way to the overall learning concept is not solid, understanding may be difficult.  Similarly, these learners may be able to solve a problem, let’s say a complex multiplication problem, even if not understanding the “big picture” because they are able to complete each step of the algorithm correctly.

Strategies for Sequential Learners

·         Most college courses are structured to be sequential - if a professor skips around a lot, try asking him/her to help you fill in the "gaps" and create a sequential presentation for you.

·         If this is not possible, consult a textbook, online resources, or talk to a reference librarian to locate a presentation of the material that is structured sequentially.

·         When studying, create outlines of material in logical order.

·         Work from the details and move towards the "big picture." This process will help develop BOTH sequential and global skills.

If you chose the example of immersing yourself first in the culture, you may be a Global learner.  Global learners are those learners who may first need to see the “big picture”.  Even if they understand the sequence of steps in a process, if they don’t understand how the ultimate concept broadly fits together with preceding steps, those various steps along the way will have little meaning.

Strategies for Global Learners

·         Be patient with yourself! Global learners are not slow, they just absorb material differently.

·         Before reading a section of a chapter in a text, skim through the entire chapter to get an idea as to where the material is heading.

·         Instead of studying in short sessions, try using longer blocks of time for each subject. This may result in developing a better overview of a topic, which will help learning of details and procedures.

·         Relate new learning to things you already know by talking to the professor or consulting other reference sources.

Interestingly, learners are not exclusively one learning style or the other.  In fact, we tend to have one that may be stronger than the other, and it only benefits you to develop both learning styles to maximize your learning potential.  Also keep in mind:

·         Try to appreciate the differences in learning styles and work on strengths and weaknesses. 

·         Remember that what seems like a disadvantage now can be an advantage later. For example, global learners can often apply information in a manner that pure sequential learners might not even think about. 

In this blog post, we’ve only presented two of the learning styles that we identify with in learners.  We’ll have more at a later date, but until then if you have questions about boosting your approach to learning by strengthening your primary or secondary learning style, visit our website (www.mymathteacher.net), or send us an email at lyn@mymathteacher.net  We’d be happy to work with you or your child in taking an inventory of learning that will be most effective, and build a path to understanding how you can put this knowledge to work!

Mrs. B.