July 2009

Inside This Issue:

What is a Learning Style?
Why Do Learning Styles Matter
What Can Go Wrong?
How to Reverse Problems

Learning is an active process that takes place in the mind of the child

How information gets into the child’s mind, and what happens to it once it gets there, is a function of the child’s learning style.  .

What is a Learning Style?

Learning is an active process that takes place in the mind of the child. How information gets into the child’s mind, and what happens to it once it gets there, is a function of the child’s learning style. There are no “right” learning styles. What is right for one, is wrong for another. But the only way that works for a particular child is to learn using their own style.

Two key and distinctive elements of learning style are the style for taking in information and the style for processing it once it has been taken in. To input new information using their senses, some children learn by hearing. These are the auditory learners. Some learn by seeing. These are the visual learners. Others learn through action. These are the kinesthetic learners.

Once information has been taken in, there are four styles of processing that information. Some children need to reflect on the abstract (“What” learners). Some need to act on the abstract (“How” learners). Others need to reflect on the concrete (“Why” learners). Still others need to act on the concrete (“What for” learners).

Other distinctive styles of learning are based on personalities (Extrovert/Introvert, Intuitive/Sensory), brain dominance (left- or right- brained), and behavior styles (quick start, implementer, fact finder, model maker).

Why Do Learning Styles Matter?

Learning styles make a tremendous difference in a classroom setting. When there is a mismatch between the style of the teacher or the larger group, and that of an individual child, that child can be left on the sidelines.

It is the cognitive structure of the child -- the mental models -- that provides meaning and order to experiences, and thus allows them to go beyond the information given and make it their own. Concepts are not understood until they are discovered by the individual learner, starting from the learner's current state of understanding and reaching an “aha” moment.

What Can Go Wrong?

The potential for difficulties that can be traced to learning styles is as varied as the many different dimensions and variations that are possible. When a child is forced to learn in ways that are based on someone else's learning style, they are limited to mimicking the results of the learning without understanding it for themselves.

If a child needs time to reflect in order to learn, this is not always supported by the lock-step group environment. An introverted child can be challenged in a classroom that depends on continuous engagement with others.

When a teacher is a person who processes the abstract through reflection, and the child needs to process by acting on the concrete, important learning can be missed.

A kinesthetic learner, who needs to take in information through activity, is challenged in an environment where the main mode of delivery is lecture, and the only option for learning is through auditory means.

How to Reverse Problems

Tutoring can make a tremendous difference in helping with these problems in order to ensure that an individual child learns, and learns completely, using his or her own style. A one-on-one tutor is free, as a classroom teacher is not, to adapt to the child's particular learning style. Also, a tutor can help the child understand his or her own learning style in order to make better use of group learning situations in the future.

Mastery Tutors (www.masterytutors.com) uses a confidential in-home assessment to understand your child's learning style in order to match your child to the tutor best suited to work with him or her. When your child is able to learn in the way that works for him or her, the outcome can be striking.

The potential is there when you learn YOUR way.

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