Learning in Style By Lorene Hanley Duquin
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Do you like drawing graphs-or conclusions? Teamwork or independent study? Not everyone learns alike. Find out your style and make school work for you.
My friend Sheila was an ideal student. She always paid attention in class and got go ad grades in every subject. She took notes and asked questions. She never forgot her homework.
She did well on quizzes. Teachers loved her. She could never understand why I was bored a lot, disliked certain teachers, and hated same subjects-like math and science-with a passion. I said school was the problem. She said I was.
Until recently most schools were on her side. High school was basically taught one way, and that's the way students were supposed to learn. But education experts now say that's wrong. The latest research shows that there's more than just one way to learn , and students are definitely not the same.
Take Sheila and me. She's logical and fact-oriented-an active learner. She loves doing labs and projects. I'm the exact opposite-the quintessential dreamer. I rely on imagination and intuition, and I drove teachers crazy because I was always talking when I was supposed to be listening.
Our different way of doing things has nothing to do with how intelligent we are, but it has a lot to do with how we responded to school and teachers. Sheila was always considered a good student. Although my grades weren't bad, I was usually considered a troublemaker.
The recent explosion of research on how the brain processes information has done a lot to explain our differences. It has also opened up new ways to make learning easier and more fun.
One of the pioneers in the field, Bernice McCarthy, Ph.D., has determined that students actually fall into four different groups:
Imaginative Learners, Analytic Learners, Commonsense Learners, and Dynamic Learners. (Gender doesn't play a role-there are an equal number of boys and girls in each group.)
These categories aren't rigid you may feel you have characteristics of more than one type-but they do describe dramatically different ways of learning.
Here's how learning styles work:
LEARNING STYLE ONE: THE IMAGINATIVE LEARNER
Jill SuIIivan, seventeen, likes to sit and think, but in a subjective way. She gets gut feelings about things and has a vivid imagination. JilI likes to listen to class lectures and to read, "but then I try to figure out how the information fits into my own life," she says, "and why it's important for me to learn it." Jill also really likes class discussions and brainstorming sessions.
She generally bases her opinions on experience-her own and other peoples'. Her favorite courses are public speaking and creative writing.
About 25 percent of high school students fit into this category.
If Jill had to learn about the Bill of Rights, she would be most enthusiastic about imagining what her life would be like if freedom of speech or freedom of religion were taken away. For a project, she might choose to write a fictional account of a weekend without rights.
LEARNING STYLE TWO: THE ANALYTIC LEARNER
Lori Bergin, fifteen, likes to sit and think, but unlike Jill who relates to feelings, people, and experiences, Lori is more logical and relies on facts when she evaluates things. What experts have to say about a subject is important to her. She's impatient with class discussions and isn't interested in the reactions and experiences of other students. "I like to think through an idea by looking at all the information available about it," she says.
Lori's the rational type. She likes doing research, and she feels most comfortable in a traditional classroom-where the teacher does the talking and she takes notes. Her favorite classes are the ones where the-information is clear-cut, I with-right and wrong answers, like math.
About 30 percent of high school students are in this category (which is pretty low, considering this is the group most schools are designed for).
If Lori were learning about the Bill of Rights, her choice of a project would be a research paper.
LEARNING STYLE THREE: THE COMMONSENSE LEARNER
Kim Zak, fourteen, is logical and facts are important to her, but she's not content to sit and puzzle things out like Lori is. Kim needs to be doing something more active while she's learning. She likes to test theories and solve problems on her own. She hates being given the answer. She's not happy when she has to listen to someone else talk or watch someone else do a demonstration. She's always the first to volunteer. and she can't understand why some of her friends don't want to participate.
"I like to take something apart and figure it out myself," Kim says. She likes labs. role-playing, and hands-on projects.
About I 7 percent of high school students fall into this category.
Kim would want to test the Bill of Rights to see if it really worked. She'd participate in a demonstration or at least role-play various situations to see for herself how a person's rights are protected.
LEARNING STYLE FOUR: THE DYNAMIC LEARNER
Christina Nenov, fifteen, learns best when she's active, like Kim. but she doesn't take as standard an approach to learning as Kim does. Ideas and people are more important to Christina than facts and things. She is highly creative and likes to look for new aspects of a subject and raise new possibilities. Then she wants to try those ideas out on other people. "I learn best when I can take a theory or an idea and see what will come of it," she says.
Christina's favorite classes are the ones in which she can move around and talk to people. She's bored when classes are too structured. She likes when classes are broken up into small groups for projects or discussions, and she of ten volunteers to give the report for her group at the end of the session.
About 28 percent of all high school students fit into this category. When studying the Bill of Rights, Christina would want to examine the school rules to see if they violated students' rights, and then set up a committee to write a new school code.
All four learning styles are equally valuable. The bad news, according to Dr. McCarthy, is that many teachers use only one method of teaching, and that method appeals mainly to Analytic Learners. If you find school boring, if you hate certain subjects, if you cram for tests but don't feel you 're really learning anything, there's a good chance the problem isn't what you 're learning but how you 're learning.
The good news is that when you're able to learn in your own style. you enjoy what you 're learning, you feel good about yourself, and you want to learn more. And there are things you can do to make school suit you. (You may be surprised to find out how many teachers are open to suggestion, too.) The idea. says Dr. McCarthy, is to always be on the lookout for ways to relate your learning style to every subject. This doesn't mean you try to get out of doing work; it means you think about what would make a subject interesting to you-then see if you can't apply it to the assignment at hand, whether it's reading a chapter in a textbook or doing a special project.
Here are some ideas:
· An Imaginative Learner should always try to relate an impersonal assignment, like graphs in a math class, to something in her own life, like the amount of electricity her family uses. For a French class. she might exchange letters with a pen pal in France. In history she might trace her family tree or interview her oldest relatives.
· An Analytic Learner has the advantage of learning in her own style at school-but that doesn't mean it'll always be easy for her. Some teachers run classes differently, and it's a good idea to work with other people on things she doesn't do as well. Analytic Learners also make good tutors.
· A Commonsense Learner might create a system of flash cards or design a worksheet for studying almost any subject. In math she could try coming up with graphs that make pictures or dot-to-dot drawings. She'd do better making a model of a historic event than writing a report.
· A Dynamic Learner does well organizing field trips or finding and scheduling guest speakers for a class. She would also make a good tutor. In math she might offer to interview people who use math in their jobs and report back to the class. In English she could consider writing and producing a contemporary version of Romeo and luliet.
Now that you know there's a way you learn best and that you can make learning more interesting for yourself, the options are endless. "The big word in all of this is connections," Dr. McCarthy says. "Try to make connections between your own personal style and what you 're studying, and you'll make leaps in intelligence." I often found ways to make the most of being an Imaginative Learner, and I discovered there was room for my ideas in many of my classes. It made school a lot more fun. My friend Sheila? She became a teacher.
Source: Seventeen Magazine
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