This week we looked at “developmental learning”, and we considered learning styles.
The acronym VARK, is what we use to identify four different learning styles.
- Visual – learn through seeing. Prefer using graphic visuals such as posters.
- Audible – prefer to hear information. Making recording or listening to podcasts are useful.
- Reading & Writing – like to absorb text based information and make notes.
- Kinaesthetic – learn by touching, and doing. Enjoy practical tasks.
It was our first week together as a class, so we played icebreaker bingo. We had to go around and find out information about each other and fill out our bingo cards. As a result, we ended up using quite a few different learning techniques; listening, asking open questions, engaging with your body language, they’re not obvious learning styles but they were learning styles nevertheless. It was useful to understand, and see first-hand that we are using so many learning techniques every day.
As a class, we discussed and identified our learning styles. I’ve always known that I learn best through reading and writing. I love to make lists… sometimes just for the fun of it. It really helps me to retain information, and it just sticks.
Being honest I was probably the odd one out because pretty much all of the rest of my class were kinaesthetic, or visual learners. Not that this bothered me, but I did make an interesting observation. I noticed through discussions, that the ‘reading and writing’ learning technique, was kind of dissed, or almost in a way frowned upon. A lot of people identified it as boring, and non-stimulating. I don’t disagree with this. It is, in comparison to a kinaesthetic learning style yes, it is very boring, but that doesn’t mean you don’t learn just as much.
The observation made me think of a few questions; do you gain more knowledge by using only 1 particular learning technique? If so what technique would that be? Would it be one in particular that is the most effective for everybody? Surely not. Do you gain more knowledge by using a particular learning technique, or does it just depend on the person? Is learning style taught?
I’m currently reading the book “Developmental Psychology (– Rachel Gillibrand, Virginia Lam, Victoria L. O’Donnell)“, and it also poses similar questions. In my opinion, I don’t think the answer is as simple as yes or no. I would say you need to look at it from a perspective of give or take. There are philosophers like Jean Piaget, who have published theories for example, his ‘Four stages of Development Theory’ that leave no room for argument, as he is stating there only 4 stages of child development.
When this happens, we isolate ourselves from the topic at hand…learning! I think it’s so important to have an open mind, and that will lead to open discussion/communication. How do you learn without some form of communication? You don’t I would say.
But that doesn’t mean that I’m not open to have a discussion about it…
