Parents and teachers are often frustrated when they teach the same content to different children and are amazed that they all respond differently.
After all, teachers seem to think, I am saying exactly the same thing to the entire class but not everybody is learning at the same speed.
Similarly, parents have memories of teaching one child and are surprised to see that their next child is not responding in the same way.
That is because everybody has a specific way in which they process information, both in terms of content that is absorbed and the time taken for it. Understanding this is crucial for effective teaching, because otherwise, we are doing a disservice to young learners.
Educationist Neil Fleming identified four common learning styles in his VARK model: visual, auditory, read/write, and kinaesthetic.
Each reflects the strongest quality in a learner and the one they will turn to naturally while learning. Forcing them to do otherwise will only stall the learning process and add to the frustration of the teacher, parent and, most importantly, the child.
Understanding these learning styles will help to make teaching more efficient and enjoyable.
For example, visual learners benefit from graphics, charts, figures and maps. Information that is drawn as a flow chart or a diagram will be more easily processed.
Aural learners, on the other hand, prefer to listen to information without being distracted by pictures. They typically will read aloud and are good at working in groups where problems are discussed and verbally addressed.
Writing down information is another way of learning. Making notes, writing down entire paragraphs to remember and reading dense text is a strategy that works in this case.
Being hands on, doing projects and experimenting suits kinaesthetic learners. They thrive in situations which require physical activities and enjoy using all their senses.
Doing projects, experiments and working in the laboratory are particularly suitable to them.
As it is obvious, no learner uses a single learning style. We are all trained to use a combination of strategies, yet not all styles suit us equally, as we have learnt over the years. Identifying these differences among young learners will help them to cope with learning content as they grow up.
Knowing that each child learns differently is common knowledge, but being able to identify these differences and maximise one’s learning techniques will help to improve retention and improve student engagement, making learning useful and fun.
It will also be a lifelong quality whose potential can be worked on and improved to suit different contexts.
Playing to the strengths of one’s learning style will not only help learners, but also make educational outcomes more successful.
Learning styles help everybody to identify their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses – qualities which will help them all through life.
In today’s digital age, these learning styles are easier to identify and teachers can find a lot of online help to develop material to suit a variety of students.
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