Essay Sample on Learning Styles

Introduction

For various reasons, teachers struggle to teach and children to learn. Every teacher and student have their learning styles but sometimes may not match. Not all children learn similarly. Some children struggle because teachers are not aware of the most appropriate learning style to use on them. The seven types of learning styles are solitary, social, logical, verbal, aural, physical, and visual (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). In visual, students often prefer to the use of images to gain an understanding of concepts. For auditory-musical, sound and music are preferred while the verbal style uses speeches and writing. In the solitary style, self-study is preferred, and learning in groups happens in the social style. The physical style uses the body, and touch while finally, logical involves the use of reasoning (Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, & Bjork, 2008). Students are likely to possess one of the learning styles mentioned above, but their pattern of preferences may be varying. For instance, a student can be visual but is a very social person.

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Research was done on several students and teachers to determine the learning style that each party preferred the most. The parties were required to fill a questionnaire with questions related to the various techniques. The primary aim of the study was to determine the most useful learning styles and those that are frustrating especially to students and lead to poor performance in the classroom. The following are the questions in the questionnaire.

As a teacher or student, what learning style do you prefer to use? Which is your dominant style of learning? Which learning style is difficult and frustrating during in the classroom? Do you use a single or multiple learning styles?

The questionnaires were given to fifteen students and five teachers. Upon completion and data analysis, it was observed all the five teachers preferred the verbal learning style where words are used in speech and writing. Eleven students also indicated that their dominant style was verbal learning. However, all these students explained that verbal learning was not the only one they used. Four of these students indicated that in addition to verbal, they also preferred logical and solitary learning styles which entail reasoning and working in groups respectively. Two students said that they also prefer the visual learning style where pictures and images are used during the learning process. The other two who had verbal as the dominant learning style also preferred working and studying alone.

Three students indicated that their dominant learning style was social. They explained that learning in groups enables them to understand concepts easily. The last single student's dominant learning style was visual since he understood better when images and pictures were used in the classroom.

The results of the research revealed that a large percentage of the students and teachers preferred the verbal learning style. The teachers now understood why some students performed poorly in class even when subjected to the same environment and learning materials. One of the approaches that can be used to study or the verbal learning style would be reading notes out loud continuously since repeating words leads to the retention of information. Secondly, study groups may also be integrated into the learning style for students to teach each other various concepts (Sun, Lin, & Yu, 2008). The study groups may be through Skype and other online platforms where people communicate verbally. If there is no study group, a verbal learner can teach a person at home while reading the concepts out loud and asking questions.

References

Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education. Academy of management learning & education, 4(2), 193-212.

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological science in the public interest, 9(3), 105-119.

Sun, K. T., Lin, Y. C., & Yu, C. J. (2008). A study on learning effect among different learning styles in a Web-based lab of science for elementary school students. Computers & Education, 50(4), 1411-1422.