Learning Styles

Learning is a complex neurological experience. As yet, we cannot detect why or how learning occurs or to what it can be attributed^[1]but underlying, are theoretical concepts such as:

• Behaviour: an earlier school of thought, based on the way we react and learn from circumstances when motivated
• Structuralist: where learners are presented with an end goal and allowed to determine what has been achieved through thinking processes
• Cognitive: recognising that people have unique thought and mental processes that affect their learning; attention, memory, language, reasoning and problem solving are key to determining the learning environment conducive to individual learning traits.^[2]

Origin

• The notion that people think, feel and experience the world in different ways through four functions of the mind (thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition) was pioneered by the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung.^[3]His ideology became integrated into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test, which emerged in the 1940s as a measure of cognitive style or "thinking style”. Its continued success has prompted the development of the contemporary interest in learning-style assessments.

Diagnosing Individual Learning Styles

• Those that champion learning style assessments claim that optimal instruction requires diagnosing individual’s learning styles and tailoring instruction accordingly. Assessments of learning style typically ask people to evaluate what kind of delivery of information they prefer (e.g., words versus pictures versus speech) and what kind of mental activity they find the most engaging (e.g., analysis versus listening) although tools for assessing are diverse.

Development of the Learning Styles Model

• The rise of learning styles is attributed to the idea that people learn in different ways from each other and therefore need different methods of learning, particular to the individual, which presumes to allow that the individual will learn more effectively.^[4]

Several distinctive learning style models have been proposed since the 1970s, and instruments developed to assess preferences within these models.

Learning Style Models

• Some of the most popular learning-style pedagogical approaches are Experiential Learning and Visual, Audio, Kinaesthetic (VAK); the following models in these theories

are well established:

• David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (1984), which gave rise to his Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) – an assessment method used to determine an individual’s learning style. Kolb’s LSI has gone on to impact management development training with studies to determine whether statistically there are significant differences in learning styles between supervisors, middle-managers, and upper managers; whether learning style differences could mirror the nature of the work environment; whether learning style differences could also be rooted in the different educational backgrounds found within managerial ranks^[5]