A learning style inventory is an assessment that shows people the modes in which they learn best. It is not an assessment in the common high-stakes sense of the word, but instead a tool to provide information to teachers and learners. Students learn using one of three dominants modes – their visual brain, their auditory brain or their kinesthetic brain; the Learning Style Inventory can help you recognize which is your style, and which is not. The latter point may be particularly important for some students who do not do well learning in the way that their teacher wants them to learn.
Imagine a teacher in the front of the room reading from a list of 50 common words – Cold, Juice, Level, Hard, Cat and so on. As the teacher reads, students check a box in one of four columns:
1) I see the word,
2) I see an image of the word,
3) I know the sound of the word,
4) I have a physical feeling when I hear the word. For each word, the child marks which of these four events occur for them. The first two are most common for visual learners, the third is a technique used by auditory learners, and the fourth is the natural response of someone who is kinesthetic.
Many teachers take the time at the beginning of the year to use this assessment with their whole class as a way to plan instructional approaches. If a third of the class is kinesthetic learners, the teacher knows that hands-on learning experiences will be important to incorporate into teaching. However, the dominant learning style is visual learning, and classrooms are generally set up for that modality. This can cause real problems for students who are not primarily visual learners.
This information helps to understand what to do and what not to do while teaching children. For instance, a kinesthetic learner may have difficulties learning in an environment too full of visual stimuli. Endless posters in a classroom may provoke a range of feelings for a student, which could be highly distracting. A kinesthetic learner needs to know how to channel distractions and maximize the visual and auditory clues they receive. Likewise, a visual learner may be uncomfortable with hands-on learning and may shy away from those learning opportunities.
Even if a teacher does not do a formal learning style inventory with their students, there are ways that a parent can discern this through simple conversation. Just asking what happens in their child’s mind when they hear the word “cat” can start a conversation in which learning style – and learning obstacles – can become much better understood. Taking the time to understand how a child responds to stimuli and cues will go a long way in developing stronger study skills among all students.
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