Learning style – Engaging the Learner
"I just wish I had a projector on my head and you had a screen on yours and then you would understand what I am trying to tell you” (9 year old)
This will be a some-what personal account, not a lot of dry research in the presentation but I will provide some links to resources and sources at the end.
So … as a visual educator since 1980 … but a visual learner all my life I have always felt something lacking in the way humans are processed through the ‘education system’ – something ignorant about the way ‘it’ assumes how we all learn – even today, 30 odd years after Gardner. I remember giving a talk to parents about visual learners in 1984 and in that 30-minute talk, endeavoring to build some awareness of what it is to understand holistically and to learn visually - relating the whole thing to visual language and how it is 'read'. You see, as a visual learner with an almost equal focus on the kinaesthetic, I find the very act of talking; speaking and explaining, difficult except when I’m in the classroom with students. [My parents always thought it was shyness, my teachers too (except the art teachers). I grew up at a time, not unlike the present, when girls were expected to be compliant but most of my friends were well schooled in passive resistantance. So, this became my story for most of my adolescent life, seemingly shy but doing what was 'right' for me despite that - understood by my Art teachers and the occasioinal English teacher].
… Back to the 30-min talk – that night, I was speaking about the essential nature of visual thinking/visual learning, the importance of seeing rather than simply looking, and how by engaging with seeing, all other forms of learning and therefore knowing the world can be enhanced.The interesting part of the evening was the number of parents who approached me after the event eager to share their Ah Ha experiences and some new found insights about their own learning styles. Some 'see' holistically, some understand sequentially and while 'schooling' respects and largely favours the latter, it seems that the former is coming into its own.
For those of you who know me, you know I have a penchant for seeking the subconscious roots of ideas, for the use of visualisation in the classroom, meditation and mindful awareness practices – not the sitting kind, the moving, active kind. Also, I have rather eclectic ‘grazing’ habits when it comes to ‘research’ - what I like to call an embodied holistic way of moving through information in search of meaning. Well, this all grew out of active reflection on this notion of visual thinking and why I seemed to learn differently to the way teachers expected me to learn and most of my then friends did. Needless to say, I loved Art, but I also loved English, Maths and Science because of the way my imagination was engaged by the content – but if I’d been tested in any of these using oral assessment instruments or external exams only, I’d probably have failed.
Somehow I was born on a cusp of education styles – the essential little person I was in those days, grew into a time that was open to new ways of doing/seeing/being. My few important teachers, the ones who ‘got me’ gave me confidence to be me and I had a strong sense of what was right for me. However, that didn’t mean that the school system was user friendly, and by all accounts, from many of our visual learners, nor is it today.
As Elliot Eisner (Professor of Education and Art at Stanford University) reminds us :
“We live at time that puts a premium on the measurement of outcomes, on the ability to predict them, and on the need to be absolutely clear about what we want to accomplish. To aspire for less is to court professional irresponsibility. We like our data hard and our methods stiff—we call it rigor.” Eisner, 2004
Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies - far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity - are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity,"
Ken Robinson: http://www.sirkenrobinson.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2009/2741867.htm ABC RN 16/6/2009
Imagine it Art: http://www.imagineitproject.com/?p=887 http://www.imagineitproject.com/?p=864
Einstein ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge” Walter Isaacson’s The Mind of Einstein
In conclusion, I can’t do better than my guru of 30 years, Elliot Eisner. “To conceive of students as artists who do their art in science, in the arts, or the humanities, is, after all, both a daunting and a profound aspiration. It may be that by shifting the paradigm of education reform and teaching from one modeled after the clock-like character of the assembly line into one that is closer to the studio or innovative science laboratory might provide us with a vision that better suits the capacities and the futures of the students we teach. It is in this sense, I believe, that the field of education has much to learn from the arts about the practice of education. It is time to embrace a new model for improving our schools.” Eisner, E. 2002, Art and the Creation of Mind Yale University Press
http://sthathena.blogspot.com/2007/09/sharing-athena-assist.html
“Who are “visual-spatial learners?” Visual-spatial learners, or VSLs, are those among us with powerful gifts of the right hemisphere.” Taking Notes in Picture Form – A Powerful Strategy for Visual-Spatial Students Alexandra Shires Golon Director, Visual-Spatial Resource
US education has a new 5 year plan i21 classrooms will follow the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a concept that helps educators tailor their teaching approaches to address different learning styles.
According to the Center for Applied Special Technology, UDL calls for:
• Multiple means of representation to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge;
• Multiple means of action and expression to give learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know; and
• Multiple means of engagement to tap into learners' interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation.
The technology systems that make up the i21 classroom provide for multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement, through the capability to add graphics, video, and sound.
"My son,Matt, was once a homeschooler taking an outside World History class
and one day, there was a guest teacher who had been in World War II. As the gentleman was giving his lecture (an oral presentation only, with no maps, pictures or other images), he stood over Matt and noticed that Matt was drawing (“doodling”) in his notebook. He held the notebook up for the entire class to see and said, “I hope the rest of you are paying more attention than this young man.” Matt was horrified that the teacher believed him to have been just “doodling.” After class, he approached the guest teacher and told him he was taking visual notes" from Taking Notes in Visual Form PDF
Sword, L. Visual Spatial Learners
Artscience – David Edwards – TED
