Personal Experience Of Using Different Learning Styles

Introduction

I don’t remember much from my early childhood that I used to like study.

Throughout primary school and secondary I saw my teacher become stricter and the work become harder. I was a quick learner, which had its advantages and disadvantages. My teachers would expect me to do well without paying much attention to me. As such, the lack of incentives left me unmotivated, slowly peeling away my desire to learning.

The nail in the coffin was high school, where I found teachers who weren’t interested in teaching at all. Their dragged us through classes with no passion, complacent with us memorising everything rather than understanding it. I had no joy in learning any more by then and while interested in going to university, my parents had no means support me economically.

I was left with my last memories of school being quite negative.

My first week at University brought a new shape and understanding of learning.

As the article presents there is a variety of attenders, and why learning styles can influence the attendance and consequently affects performance.

Attendance of University students at their timetable teaching session is usually associated with higher levels of education attainment and is considered to reflect students’ level of engagement with their course and to be critical to student success.

Jansen and Suhre (2010) consider attending classes crucial for student’s develop.

Several studies have commented on the fact that attendance may also be linked to other forms of motivation and commitment.

Dolmicar (2004) has found the most common reason for attending were to find out what material was relevant and to ensure nothing important was missed.

In 1960, Rita Dunn create the phrase “learning styles” defining it as the way to learn material that is unique to individual (Gurpinar et al.2011), also understanding of learning styles has multiple benefits, influence lecture attendance and consequently affects performance.

There is no single “most effective” way of learning, you can consider which is most beneficial for you and when each style is appropriate.

Learning styles affect every aspect of our lives. The way in which we take in information, process it, assimilate it, and use it is affected by our predominant learning style.

Kolb (1984) propose a four stage learning cycles: Concrete Experience – doing/having an experience; Reflective Observation – reflective on the experience; Abstract Conceptualisation – learning from experience; Active Experimentation – trying out what have you learned.

According to Kolb effective learning is when a person progress through a cycle of four stages. “Learning is process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience”(Kolb, 1984,p.38), however Honey and Mumford (1986) inspired from and built upon Kolb’s L.S. identified four different approaches people took to learning: Activist – learning by doing, Theorist – like to understand theory behind the action, Pragmatist – thinking about how to apply theories to reality, Reflector – learn through observation, reflecting on results. Honey and Mumford recommended that to maximise personal learning, each learner ought to understand their own learnings styles and seek out opportunities to learn in their learning styles. But they should also develop their learning capacity in other styles to become a more well – rounded learner. Honey and Mumford also suggested that the learning experience could be improved if the learner was more aware of learning styles.

Conclusion

Everyone learns differently, and I think the best learning styles which might suit me is a mix between “Reflector learner” and “Pragmatic learner”, to use in different situation.

As the “Reflector learner” I tend to observe many different prospective, collect a lot of data, both first-hand and from others, and I prefer to think about it thoroughly before coming up to conclusion. I prefer to take a back seat in meetings and in discussions. I am a good listener to other and rarely jump into conclusion.

As the “Pragmatic learner” I am practical and logical and prefer concept than I can apply directly to the task at hand and hare immediate obvious benefits. Sometimes I am impatient when it comes to lengthy explanation or discussion. As “Pragmatic learner” I am audio learners, meaning my learn by sound and repetition of those sound.

After advantages are offset by some disadvantages of my learning style.

Like every Reflector I like to do well with traditional paper and pencil assessment, so I tend to make a lot of notes, and might distract me from a topic, however as a Pragmatic I might become very confused or tend to disregard theories and ideas with no obvious or immediate application.

In addition, as individual I might have different preconceived ideas, about a certain topic, but in group I can learn a lot from other members and appreciate the different perspective or points of view which then widen my understanding and learning.