A teacher friend reported that her principal addressed a staff of teachers that had been complaining about several students not wanting to work as the other students thus creating a discipline problem. The teachers were referring to several black students in a classroom that was previously an all white school. The comment to the staff was that the black students learned differently. No further explanation was given and no strategies or discussions came about as a result of this comment.
The principal may have hit on a point if race wasn’t brought into the factor. Further conversation was needed. Not all children learn through the same modality. It has nothing to do with a particular race or the size of the brain. There are many scholarly articles that reflect on the effect of how culture and environment play a part in the learning. The early 70s brought about research that studied individual learning styles.
A recent article in the Times stated that in New York there was a re-emerging theory that many black and white children learn differently because of their different cultural backgrounds. This theory was brought about because of the high drop out rates in minorities and often becomes confusing and contradictory, evoking charges of racism from both sides. There is a common-sense idea among educators that all children are different; thus, they all learn differently.
Teachers so often teach the way they were taught. It must be more than that today and educators need to be aware that the teaching must be focused on the way the child learns and adjust the pedagogy. It’s not about the teaching; it’s about the learning. A point I emphasize in my book You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me! The Educators’ Secret Handbook.
Many educators agree that the discussion is a highly politicized debate about a very common-sense idea that all children are different. The focus should not be on a child’s learning style as different but be on better utilization of various methods of teaching to the learner. Principals should advocate a wide variety of ways to teach and not put students down simply because they are not understood. If teachers use various learning styles in order to reach all students, they will create stimulating, culturally relevant learning environments and all students will meet success. And, yes, that is a very high expectation in education today.
All students learn through active involvement, activities that are purposeful, and social participation. Students need to connect new knowledge to previously known concepts. Most of all if you don’t motivate students, they will become a discipline problem. I would think that this was common sense in most classrooms but I have experienced several teachers that blame students and parents for the lack of learning and poor grades, never themselves. Students struggle when they try to learn in ways that aren’t natural for them. There is never a right way or an only way to teach.
The basic categories of learning styles are: auditory (hear), visual (see), and kinesthetic (touch). Just because a child has a dominant learning style doesn’t mean that the other styles can’t be utilized. Using only one learning style can debilitate a child’s potential.
• Auditory learners remember what is heard. They benefit from lectures, discussions, and questioning. Some strategies include singing songs or listening to content related CDs, and develop rhymes and mnemonics for remembering information. The characteristics of these learners include: remember names, coordinate clothes, hum or talk aloud, enjoy listening, reads out loud, and verbalization. They may have difficulty reading maps or diagrams and show trouble learning in a noisy environment.
• Kinesthetic learners learn best by doing. They remember what was previously done, not what was seen or heard. Trouble paying attention and staying on task may be difficult. They benefit from manipulatives, building, and acting out scenes. They need to move and be active and tend to play with any object when bored.
• Tactile learners like to use their hands and fingers to learn. They excel when writing, drawing, and doodling. Creativity is their forte. They love designing and illustrating written work and thrive on physically expressed encouragement from others.
Educators proclaim that not all learners are the same but if you visit a school all learners are treated alike. Despite the differences among learners teachers still talk with the whole group of students, delivering the same information at the same time. After all, they must teach to the standards. Uniformity overrules diversity. A balance must be found with the attention to beliefs, theories, and research. Schools need to decide what should be uniform and what should be diverse. It’s much easier to accommodate sameness than it is to differentiate. If students do not learn through whatever the current approach may be, they are often labeled and sent to ‘special’ classes.
The notion of learning styles are helpful to educators because it provides the ability for a rich and diverse classroom environment that offers many different ways to learn i.e. through films and books, independent study and group work, discussions in the classroom, and problem based learning both in the classroom and in the community.
Teaching staffs also need to reflect on questions such as “How can I do better? What am I doing that I don’t know? What am I not doing that I don’t see? Administrators need to be able to provide a process that leads to answers instead of telling the staff that ‘those children just learn differently’. Administrators need to help teachers to think about such matters as people’s style of speaking, children’s background knowledge, and what people in a student’s community find interesting and important.
Knowing, understanding, and using various learning styles are not the do all and be all. Assessments often clarify the reasons for unsuccessful students, indicating whether the differences among students result from motivation, preparation, experience, or learning styles. When a teacher determines the underlying cause of the split class, the teaching can be tailored to meet the student’s needs. Assessments should drive the instruction.
Assessment doesn’t mean tests. It means being aware of conceptual understanding during note taking and illustrations in notebooks, group discussions, hypothesizing results based on previous information, and types of questions being probed by both students and teacher. Questioning strategies play a dominant role in assessing student progress. Higher-level questions geared toward student analyzing, evaluating, and creating are necessary. The questioning process is a vehicle that keeps students thinking and learning beyond an initial correct response.
Reports issued by professional associations in core subjects support this type of teaching, learning, and questioning. It is recommended that there be:
• less passive learning
• less whole-class teacher directed instruction
• less one to one transmission of information from teacher to student
• less rewarding silence in the classroom
• less fill in the bank worksheets and seat-work
• less time with basal readers and textbooks
• less attempt to cover large amounts of material
• less rote memorization of facts and details
Each child is different and therefore, each learns differently. It’s not about race, color, or creed. It’s about meeting individual needs. Parents and educators need to strive to meet the needs of the individual. As a parent that raised two boys, their growing into adulthood taught me many things. They had different needs as far as friends, academics, sports, likes, and dislikes. If your own children are very different as most parents claim, why expect anything else in the classroom.
