I am a visual, aural, read/write, kinaesthetic, introvert, extravert, sensing, intuitive, analytic, thinking, feeling, judging, perceiving, independent, dependent, collaborative, competitive, participant, avoidant, wholist, analytic, verbalizing, imaging, visualizing, deductive, synthetic, expansive, serialist, holist, field-dependent, field-independent, intrinsically motivated, extrinsically motivated, impulsive, reflexive, convergent, divergent, levelling, sharpening, concrete-sequential, concrete-random, abstract-sequential, abstract-random, assimilating, exploring, adaptive, innovative, reproductive, experiencing, thinking, doing, reflective, directed, self-directed, undirected, application-directed, meaning-directed, deep, surface, strategic, apathetic, elaborative, impulsive, concrete, independent, self-assertive, cerebral, affective, type 1, type 2, type 3, global, scanning, focusing, physical, logical, social, solitary, musical-rhythmic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, spatial, body, active, common sense, dynamic, imaginative, quadrant 1, quadrant 2, quadrant 3, quadrant 4, theorizing, organizing, humanitarian, legislative, judicial, executive, tactile, pragmatic, versatile learner.
My birth sign is Aquarius, and I was born in the Year of the Rat.
Incidentally…
It appears that 97% of American teachers actually believe in learning styles, by which I mean the belief that there are persistent traits describing how people learn that can be used to determine the best way to teach them. This is despite at least most, if not all, of the many scores of such theories existing somewhere between astrology and fairies in terms of evidence for their relevance or applicability in real life learning. Though there may be ever-shifting conditions under which we may at times prefer one or other of whatever learning styles the theory we like offers – this may be a source of the persisting appeal of the idea – there is no reliable evidence that this is in any way relevant to whether or not we will learn better or worse (whatever we think that means) when offered a learning experience that is tailored to that preference. It’s not by any means for want of trying – countless studies exist, and that’s not counting probably many more that never saw the light of day because they had only null results to report and so were not deemed worthy of publication – so the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that these theories are most likely false.
It wouldn’t be so worrying were it not that there is evidence that such beliefs are harmful to learners and, even if there were not, then the time, effort, and money put into trying to use them would be far better spent on things that actually might work.
In the extremely unlikely event that it were one day proven that an individual has a persistent style of learning that, when we teach to that style, consistently leads to improved learning (however we measure that), then it would be my duty as a teacher to try to teach them to learn in other ways, because here’s the thing: the real world in which we are and must be lifelong learners doesn’t come neatly packaged in ways that fit your learning style. We can all learn to learn in all the ways that I list above, and then some, and we can all become better and smarter by applying the right strategy at the right time. We therefore need to cultivate as many diverse learning strategies as we can, and learn when to use them. That’s just common sense which, as it happens and surprisingly enough, is itself a learning style, according to the 4MAT model.
