Learning Styles

I always considered it to be part of my teaching pedagogy that I would teach to all learning styles and in doing so, I would be making my best attempt to reach all of my students. While I still believe it is important to consider the multiple intelligences and various learning styles of my students, after reading Willingham's article, I have come to appreciate that it is not necessarily all about my students' learning styles but rather, I should also consider the content that I am teaching.

As I was reading, I started to wonder about memorization verses making meaning. Willingham wrote, “some memories are stored as visual and auditory representations but most memories are stored in terms of meaning”. My ultimate goal is that the students are taking the information that I am presenting and fitting the new content into their existing schema. At the end of the day, the information that the students were able to connect to their own lives is that information that will stay with them. In this sense, even if I was to teach to a child’s superior memory it wouldn’t matter because it is not the surface level understanding that I am concerned about.

In addition, as Willingham stated, “different representations are either more or less effective depending on the information; they cannot be substituted”. I liked his example of if a question about a share of green verses the level of a person’s voice. Therefore, if I were to attempt to teach to a child’s specific learning style I may be fighting the way the information would naturally be stored.

I think that by considering content over a students’ perceived learning style, I will be more likely to aide my students in their ability to make meaningful connections and at the same time, I won’t have to fight the way the brain naturally stores information. I also believe that teaching to a content’s modality will force me to examine each unit in a new light. As a lifelong learner , I always look forward to the chance for gaining new perspectives.