Learning Styles

Learning styles refers to how a person learns best, and each individual learns best; each individual has his/her own unique style.

There are three dimensions to learning style:

• the cognitive dimension focuses on ways people decode, encode, process, store and retrieve information.
• the affective dimension focuses on emotional and personality characteristics such as motivation, curiosity, persistence, anxiety, risk taking, and personal interests.
• the physiological dimension focuses on sensory perceptions (e.g., taste and smell); environmental characteristics (light, furniture, temperature); intake (e.g., eating food); time (when we work or do things best, e.g. in the morning, afternoon, or evening); and mobility (moving around).

The learning style models of Anthony Gregorc (1982) and Bernice McCarthy (Morris & McCarthy, 1999) provide a profile of the cognitive dimension, but expand into the affective dimension. The learning style model of Rita and Kenneth Dunn provides a profile of the physiological dimension.

Learning styles that are centered in the cognitive domain are based on the theory of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1976).

In Jung's theory, all conscious mental activity can be classified into four mental processes:

• two perception processes -- sensing and inuiting
• two judgment processes -- thinking and feeling.

What comes into consciousness, moment by moment, comes either through the senses or through intuition.

Perceptions, though, must be used to remain in consciousness.

Perceptions are used (i.e., sorted, weighed, analyzed, evaluated, assigned into action, etc.) by the two judgement processes, thinking and feeling.

Everyone regularly uses all four processes, but we do not use them equally well. From childhood, each of us has come to rely on one process more than others. On mental process, then, is relied on more than the others, and becomes the center, the core, of the personality.

Everyone uses all four processes, but we differ in how much and how well we use them. In every person, one of the processes is dominant and indicates the basic way the person addresses life.

The typical curriculum of American schools is not designed to address differences in the learning styles of the various personality types. Morris and McCarthy (1999), for example, claim that teachers teach to 25% of their students 75% of the time.

Two biases are evident:

• Schools expect students to work quietly, sitting quietly in their own seats most of the time.
• Schools put sensing students at a disadvantage by using a predominance of printed materials.

References
Morris, S. & McCarthy, B. (1999). 4MAT in action (4th ed.). Barrington, IL: Excel, Inc.
Gregorc, A.F. (1982). The energic model of styles. Columbia, CT: Gregorc Associates, Inc