Working with different learning styles

Hello everyone,

I think we sometimes confuse our students' learning styles with their abilities to learn.

Let me give an extreme example.

A blind person can read and play music. Any blind person may be taught to read and play music. However, the sort of music reading that a blind person does is different from the sort a seeing person does. If I am unable to teach music literacy for the blind, then I might be tempted to say that a blind person cannot be taught to read music. If I were working with a blind person's playing skills, I would probably use auditory and kinesthetic techniques, but if I insisted on using visual techniques ("Just watch how I do it") I'll have to admit that I am unable to teach the blind person to play.

Still, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and George Shearing prove that it can be done.

Now, by the same token, if I take visual learners and insist on teaching them by requiring them to listen only to my lecture and take notes, I will not teach them very much.

As well, requiring an auditory learner to pick up something simply by reading it won't be very useful.

Ditto the other modalities.

I'm not saying that a visual learner can't learn to listen and take notes, and auditory and kinesthetic learners should never read.

I'm saying that we need to do two things: use a variety of strategies that accommodate different styles of learning, and consciously teach skills that colleges require (like listening to lectures, taking notes, and learning from reading).

Show pictures with your direct instruction; use manipulatives; combine movement with learning; use role play; teach how to take notes; teach how to listen and filter important facts; teach how to see details in films, pictures, and designs; and use every trick in every book you find that works.

The sightless can read; the deaf can move rhythmically; the non-ambulatory can compete in marathons. Everyone can learn--with adaptation and a little help.

Jeff Combe