Learning styles are certainly something we should all be aware of with young children but I think we should also work out how each of us learns as an adult. What are our strengths and weaknesses? How could we learn from colleagues, those in a different generation (older or younger)?
Certain teaching methods foster specific ways of learning – rote memorisation is still popular (despite much research indicating there are better ways to learn) and when carried to the extreme I believe we end up with individuals with banks of disconnected pieces of information. In my experience those students seem incapable of independently connecting the pieces of whatever they’ve learned or any new information that might (rarely it seems!) come into their brains.
I have become an avid adult learner. As a young child I was reportedly ‘an early reader’ and at primary school I was always in the top four in our class in a small school which sadly only offered what was then called the 3‑R’s (reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic). But I certainly didn’t know how I learned; I’m not sure anyone else did either.
Regrettably the push to read to your child seems to have obscured the art of teaching a child to actually speak — first! There is more to learning to speak than simply being read to and when a child speaks well it doesn’t happen by accident.
Where then does that leave me learning as an adult? I now know I have a very visual memory – proven (I believe!) by the fact that I seldom ‘put anything away’. If I do so I won’t ‘see’ the item days later and consequently won’t be able to find it! I have had to learn a lot since I left school at 18 and am very glad that I’ve had the time and inclination to do so…my own way. Despite attending four years of college, starting ‘late’ at age 22 to qualify as a teacher, most of my learning has taken place in the past 35 years in the evenings as an avid reader, largely pre-internet.
I definitely learn and interpret what I learn differently from my peers and most certainly from many of those a generation much younger than me, except for my sons. I find myself frequently apologising to my sons for how they were taught. Both are life long learners with some quite different skill sets but other skills in common, and having been taught to think differently have more awareness of their own and others’ different learning styles.
I know I taught them to never stop learning, no matter the subject, the source or how they learned the information. They find it a challenge with their 20 and 30-something friends – no one seems to apply any leadership qualities, use their initiative, take up the cudgel if you will, and get things done or accomplished. They always seem to be the driving force behind any venture they are part of. Always seeming to understand the nuances, the connections, the details that matter between all the relevant parts of the puzzle and capable of thinking things through, often quite quickly, and finally accomplishing the goal.
I too was able to think, but taught not to question, despite “I know but……†being one of my stock queries at age 5. Thus most of my desire to really learn stagnated until I reached my early 20’s and was free to learn my own way. Of course I struggled at the college level because I had a fairly poor foundation for learning despite (or because of?) attending academic schools for 14 years. Being ‘an early reader’ wasn’t an asset, my reading comprehension was always very poor. Yet it turns out that comprehension is one of the essentials of even very early learning.
Where comprehension fits in the learning puzzle became clearer to me when my youngest son was evaluated, yearly, by a certified teacher for our home education programme. She was confused by the high level of his comprehension at 5 years of age and his relatively low level of reading ability – apparently, according to standard teaching lore, ‘you don’t have comprehension if you can’t read’!
Which means that many teachers wouldn’t understand that babies around age 12 months, sometimes earlier, can have a very high level of receptive language or comprehension (they clearly understand what you are saying to them or asking them to do) way before they are capable of an equivalent and appropriate response in expressive language (speech). They are learning aurally and visually – by listening and seeing and interpreting the world around them. Very young children learn most efficiently when the adult they are with is passionate about being with them and watching them learn.
Having developed so much understanding of child development in the past 30+ years my skills in reading, writing and learning my way have become greater since those days in my early 20’s when I struggled to keep up with those I thought of as the much brighter sparks at my British teacher training college. It didn’t come easily to me but I did learn a lot and I finally brought my latent ability to think into play.
Since that time I have taken new paths, not dared taken by many others before me or since. Each path required continuous learning — I read, I communicated with others and then I thought and reasoned everything out.
My different learning skills have launched two sons into the world through our home education programme – well able to adapt and also to be leaders and teachers. Our family also became the rehabilitation and medical supervisory team for my husband’s survival and recovery – he’s a real miracle; we did it!
With my learning skills and teaching skills I’ve taken a couple of young children from developmental delay status (lacking language, having anxiety attacks, hand flapping and poor eye contact being among their missing puzzle pieces) to being mainstreamed into school.
I’ve helped managed the cases and otherwise helped three 90-somethings and one 100-something (two with Alzheimers, the third a stroke victim and the last a caregiver for her 50-something Downs syndrome son) and made the quality of their waning years much better than they would otherwise have been. I’ve offered respite care to several Down’s syndrome adults and children.
I would now say that my learning style and my teaching style are intuitive as well as visual. As a result I also find it fairly easy to tailor what I know to the person I’m teaching. I can integrate topics and situations with each age group taking into account any of their special needs and get my point across. I can home in on what they need most at any one time, regardless of their age and all ‘my students’ respond positively.
Now I can say that ‘alone’ and ‘one-on-one’ are two of my best personal learning styles and it turns out that ‘one-on-one’ is also my best and most productive teaching mode. Do you think it’s a coincidence?
What do you know and how do you learn? What are your learning styles?