Learning Styles According to Psychology

Throughout the last few years specifically there has been a dramatic increase in online learning for people of all ages, this is fact. However, from each individual to the next we may have different preferred ways to learn. Individuals will vary from learning through images, texts, readings, theories, experiments, or examples (Truong, 2016). While we all prefer to learn differently, should we then begin shaping our teaching methods to those learning or research styles? That is what we will discuss within this paper, a review of whether or not it is appropriate to alter methods used to effectively teach students based current learning strategies and preferred learning methods.

Description of Theory

In order to discuss possible implications of modifying teaching techniques to match individual learning methods, we first must understand what the learning methods are and what the benefits of them are. The individual learning methods is sometimes also referred to as The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Sener & Cokcaliskan, 2018). Sener & Cokcaliskan (2018) describe criteria which should be taken into consideration when evaluating which intelligence an individual would identify as, and it is explained as:

“1. Potential isolation by brain damage.

2. The existence of idiots, savants, prodigies, and other exceptional individuals.

3. An identifiable core operation or set of operations.

4. A distinctive developmental history.

5. An evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility.

6. Support from experimental psychological tasks.

7. Support from psychometric findings; and

8. Susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system.”

Once it is understood an individuals differences, they can then be broken down into the nine different intelligences. Per Sener & Cokcaliskan (2018) there is Logical/Mathematical Intelligence which is the ability to comprehend and calculate different scenarios systematically or logically—this is sometimes referred to as “number smart”. Second is a Verbal or Linguistic Intelligence which is the ability to comprehend and compose language in various forms, writers, journalists, and poets are often examples of this type of intelligence and it is sometimes referred to as “word smart”. Third, is Bodily or Kinesthic Intelligence—this “refers to the body for expression,” and a lot of times professional dancers and athletes are proven to have this type of intelligence—often referred to as “body smart”. Fourth is a Musical Intelligence, people that are able to identify patterns, pitches, rhythms, and emotions within a sound or musical genre are often identified as having Musical Intelligence—or often referred to as “music smart”. Fifth is Interpersonal Intelligence, which is the ability to understand not only yourself but your interactions with everyone else with the ability to interpret feelings, emotions, desires, strengths, and motivations—this is often referred to as “people smart.” Sixth is Visual or Spatial Intelligence which is often referred to as “picture smart”, people with this type of intelligence will be able to create, perceive or imagine up images or creations—artists or architects often have this type of intelligence.

Seventh is the “self-smart” or Intrapersonal Intelligence. Having this type of intelligence is much like Interpersonal Intelligence, but instead of being able to see the feelings, emotions, desires and strengths and motivations of others, you see this for yourself. You are able to read yourself, thus “self-smart”. Typically, the people with this intelligence is therapists, salespersons, and political leaders. Eighth is “nature smart” or the Naturalistic Intelligence, most people that have this type of intelligence are zoologists, biologists, or astronomers and they can live in harmony with nature. Ninth is the Existential Intelligence and it is the ability to question the existence of “human, death, meaning of life and reason for existence,” Existential is the newest type of intelligence (Sener & Cokcaliskan, 2018).

Once individuals are broken out into types of intelligence, we can then understand their preferred methods of learning; 1. Visual learners, 2. Auditory learners, 3. Kinesthic learners, 4. Tactile learners, 5. Individual learners, and 6. Group learners (Sener & Cokcaliskan, 2018). It has been found that learners commonly have a variation of all of the learning styles but will excel in one specific area and that information seemingly comes “easier to them”.

Impacts on Learning

Continuing to review the study done by Sener & Cokcaliskan (2018) they first reviewed participants via genders to see if there was a difference in learning per an individuals gender, male or female. They also studied the different types of intelligence to see which type of intelligence or learning style was the most popular among the studied participants. The participants of the study were adolescent learners and they lived in a village, thus the top three highest learning styles that they found were Naturalistic, Visual and Kinesthic. In conclusion, the research states that it should consider individual differences in learning to better incorporate other learners, or help individuals excel in other areas as well.

VARK is the name for the most common forms of learning styles—visual, auditory, reading/writing and Kinesthic (Singh, 2016). It appears that most of the learning approaches have been developed based on this type of learning, leaving the fact that others can excel in other areas a topic of concern. If an individual excels in any intelligence outside of these four areas, then they would likely have a harder time with school and learning. However, Singh (2016) found that only 8% of variance was explained by personality and/or learning styles. That leaves an additional 92% to be explored. Within that knowledge, should teachers explore more teaching methods? Should teachers focus on one learning method, and allow others other opportunities to learn if they can’t understand the assignment? Or should teachers just explain the problem, and allow students to find their own way to solve the problem?

Description of Research Methods

Kirschner (2017) describes that in order for a learning method to be valid or valuable to a students learning the learner has to 1. Be an optimal learning style that they learn from, 2. The individual must be aware of the learning style, and there has to be a reliable or valid way to determine the style of learning, and 3. Their learning and instruction styles must then be aligned accordingly to fit their designed learning styles. In an ideal situation a learning intuition would be able to identify each learners learning styles and would be able to fully develop the student via their optimal learning method. An option for this to even be possible, would be to test students every year, or even twice every school year to ensure their learning styles aren’t developing in other areas or so forth and place them in a classroom that specializes in teaching that specific learning method. Based on what we know of the different learning styles, this could lead every school to having up to a minimum of 9 to 18 classrooms for every single grade. You can begin to see the difficulty in this now.

However, Kirschner (2017) goes into further critical review of the personalized learning methods. Kirschner’s first criticism of this topic is that people cannot ultimately be clustered into a specific group, best explained as “most differences between people on whatever dimension one might think up are gradual and not nominal” (2017). When assigning a learning style to an individual, it is usually assigned based on a median or mean score, and not an exact score—thus the learner while having higher scores in one area, may actually benefit from a mixture of learning styles or from one that they maybe did not score as highly in.

Another criticism of learning styles is based on the reliability of the tests which determine the learning styles. When an individual self-reports a lot of times answers can be expatiated or omitted from the full version of the truth, leading to unreliable results—thus the test results based on self-reporting methods are very unreliable (Kirschner, 2017). The best way to analyze a persons learning style would be to have an assessment done by a trained professional, someone that would be able to assess the student on an individual basis and review their responses and the time it takes for them to learn a concept based on how it is presented. A method to test whether or not specific teaching methods based on learning styles would benefit a student would be test the students to determine which learning style they classify themselves as, separate the different learners into groups and split each group in half so that half receive teaching methods based on their learning style, and half receive the normal teaching methods—at the end of the teachings, each learner regardless of learning style would take the exact same test to test their ability to comprehend the information they received in class (Kirschner, 2017).

Strengths and Limitations

If evaluated properly, assessing for learning styles could be hugely beneficial to students and their future success adapting to new teaching methods. Within the world of professionals, work is tailored to individual learning styles based on the type of field one decides to go into. Understanding these differences could be beneficial to helping an individual succeed in a specialty area or gain a dream career of theirs. Truong (2016) discusses how learning styles can fluctuate, but don’t do so at a continuously fast pace but rather are gradually developing over time. This learner believes that based on that information, and the fact that most learning done in the modern world is done electronically there is much room for improvement in the understanding of what a learning style essentially is and how it is made up.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this learner has a better understanding of what makes up a learning style and the difficulties in expressing the learning style in a classroom with other varied learners. For this learner, linguistic, Kinesthic, and intrapersonal learning methods have always been the best way form of learning—however that was not always the case, this learner has also gradually gained learning styles in logistical methods. Which was never the case growing up, so in conclusion to this paper the questions have seemingly been answered regarding a preferred teaching method would benefit students… but the question that goes unanswered is what is the gradual change of learning styles, and how does the change occur, and why?

References

Kirschner, P. A. (2017) Stop Propagating the Learning Styles Myth. Science Direct.

https://www.proquest.com/docview/1877280266?accountid=27965&parentSessionId=sDu0lKjnsfusReCwQ0sIobuWL6VTc9e4KRaWnjfkA7g%3D

Sener, S., & Cokcaliskan, A. (2018) An Investigation Between Multiple Intelligences and

Learning Styles [PDF]. Journal of Education and Training Studies. https://courserooma.capella.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/PSYC-FPX/PSYC-FPX3500/210700/Course_Files/cf_mult_intel_learn_styles.pdf

Singh, T. (2016) Learning Styles. The National Medical Journal of India.

https://www.proquest.com/docview/1877280266?accountid=27965&parentSessionId=sDu0lKjnsfusReCwQ0sIobuWL6VTc9e4KRaWnjfkA7g%3D

Truong, H. M. (2016). Integrating Learning Styles and Adaptive e-learning System: Current

Developments, Problems and Opportunities. Science Direct. https://www-sciencedirect-

com.library.capella.edu/science/article/pii/S0747563215001120