Ever since she was a child Ruhi has loved to sketch and draw pictures. After her dad told her a story, she would spend the next few days drawing the characters and the action. Stick figures at first, then more and more sophisticated images as time went by. Drawing and visualising helped her remember the story and relate it to her friends.
When I was a child, my teacher taught us to recite “Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone”. It was, as I realised later, a great way to remember the number of days in the month. I still can recall the tune, long after the need to recite has passed. The same applies to the singsong way in which we learnt conjugations in Sanskrit. Decades after I have purposefully uttered a Sanskrit word, I can rattle off conjugations.
Arsh loves words. When he ran into a new one, he couldn’t wait to go find the exact meaning and write a sentence, or a poem, or a story with the word in it. Over time he has equipped himself with many words with many a story embedding them.
Rohit loves working with his hands. Tell him of an idea, and he wants to make some physical structure using it. His room is full of clay models, Lego structures, strings with weights, straws, broken bottles, and such. He believes he understands something if he can touch and feel it.
Harish loves puzzles. His idea of fun is to try and analyse anything new he runs into by thinking of the components, how they connect and interact with each other, and what makes them work. Put a plate of methi mutter malai in front of him and he will start talking about how the bitterness of fenugreek is offset by the sweetness of cinnamon. Sigh. Becomes difficult when all one wants to do is tuck in.
Shruti likes to vocalise her thoughts. When she is grappling with a new idea, she will put the thoughts swirling in her mind into words. She likes her listeners to correct her occasionally, but more often than not she is content if others listen and make encouraging sounds. Once she has articulated something, she likes to debate it.
Deepa is the quiet types. Woe betide the person who disturbs her when she is at her desk working out an idea or clarifying her own thoughts. She will be quiet for a time and then when ready, she is all set to talk about her thoughts. Always cogently expressed, often written down neatly by hand.
What’s common to all of these is that there is someone trying to learn something. They all use different techniques to do it. Techniques that suit their temperaments. That speak to who they are. Learning experts refer to these as the Seven Learning Styles. What are these styles?
- Visual or Spatial: learners prefer using pictures, images, and spatial understanding. Visual learners think in pictures. They often create mental images to retain information. They have mental maps for everything. Think of the memory palace trope that’s used in works of fiction. Those are visual learners.
- Aural: learners rely on sound and rhyme. They are the ones who would profit most from podcasts and lectures
- Verbal: learners will use words, written and spoken. They are ones most likely to say “I will gladly consume a podcast, give me the transcript”. These learners will repeatedly read till they are word perfect.
- Physical: learners prefers using the body, hands, and sense of touch. Not for them the listening and watching. They want to take things apart and put them back. They want to build models.
- Logical: learners will use reasoning and systems thinking. They are excellent mathematicians and coders. They are quick to see patterns and work out interplay between system components.
- Social: learners prefer studying in groups. They will organise study circles, excel at team work on assignments. They love being challenged because that helps them clarify their own thoughts.
- Solitary: learners will study by themselves. They set their own goals and make schedules to achieve them. They monitor their own progress and play devil’s advocate on their own.
The fact that there are seven styles does not mean that we use just one of these. Sure, we have preferences and dislikes, but we rarely stick to one style. In most learning experiences, we will probably dip into one or more styles to learn. A home cook watching a video on how to hand make bread, will ultimately have to work with their hands to get a feel of what consistency of dough delivers the best results. No amount of watching will replace the knowledge that their fingers offer.
Knowing about one’s learning style preference is important to get more efficient with one’s learning. What we like, we are likely to do more of. What we do more of, we are likely to get better at.
Knowing that different learning styles exist is important to educators. They then know that they have to used a mix of methods to teach. They cannot depend on what they themselves prefer, just because it’s easy for them. Teaching is not so much about the teacher, but about the pupils.
Makarand
This post is part of a series where I attempt to demystify jargon that we use in the development world. You will get to see a list of topics I have identified here. The hyperlinks, where available, take you to the posts on the topic.
Musings of a wanderer 