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Learning Styles
A “learning style” can be thought of as habitual patterns in how a person learns or in how a person prefers to learn. The manner in which people think, learn, and process information is often influenced by their attitudes, feelings, and preferences. Furthermore, the nature of this influence differs from person to person. Both preservice and in-service teachers are socialized to be sensitive to the unique educational needs of learners for which they have responsibility. Teachers are often encouraged to individualize instruction, as much as possible, within their classrooms. This climate has led to an interest in the learning styles of students.
Education researchers attempt to apply research in learning styles to explanations for academic achievement and school performance. This research activity is typically framed in a general sense as a search for aptitude-treatment interactions (ATIs). ATI theory suggests that optimal learning results when the instruction is exactly matched to the aptitudes, styles, or preferences of the learner. ATI research rests on the hope that some instructional strategies (treatments) are more or less effective for particular individuals, depending upon their specific abilities, cognitive-learning styles, or learning preferences.
History and Definitions
Interest among more contemporary researchers in the concept of style arose in part from perceived inadequacies of traditional testing (as most popularly manifested in the intelligence quotient [IQ]). Researchers sought to identify processes that underlie individual differences in task performance, which led to the search for new ways to describe cognitive functioning. Today, much confusion exists in terminology related to the concept of “learning style.” Sometimes researchers, working in isolation, define the same concept in different ways. Similarly, different terms are often used interchangeably to refer to the same concepts. For our purposes, learning styles are organized into three styles:
- Cognition-centered
- Personality-centered
- Activity-centered
Cognition-Centered Styles
Cognition-centered styles tend to be closely related to perception and cognitive abilities. They are viewed as having a physiological basis, being relatively fixed at an early age, automatic (not amenable to conscious manipulation), and pervasive. The term cognitive style is a generic term that focuses on individual differences in perception, which purportedly provides insight into a person's cognition and how they adapt to the world around them. Many different sources of individual differences in cognitive style have been proposed (see reviews by Riding & Rayner, 1998). These styles are typically assessed through visual/perceptual or object sorting tasks that have been specifically designed to measure individual differences in the style construct. Riding and Cheema (1991) reviewed the literature on cognitive styles, and concluded that they can be grouped into “holistic versus analytic” and “verbal versus imagery” style dimensions.
“Thinking styles” refer to the unique ways in which people use their intelligence and/or knowledge, and reflect how abilities and acquired knowledge are used in day-to-day interactions with the environment. For example, people who enjoy creating their own rules for doing things, prefer tasks that allow them to focus on one aspect of the task until it is completed, and prefer tasks that require abstract thinking would be characterized as having a legislative, monarchic, and global thinking style.
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