It is said that learning styles are the characteristic, cognitive, affective, and psychological behaviors that serve as relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment.

With this in view, we can therefore say that learning style is the way in which each learner begins to concentrate, process, and retain new and difficult information. That interaction occurs differently for everyone.

There is no learning style that is either “good” or “bad.” Each merely provides insight into how a given person is most likely to learn a new and difficult information. Tapping into the human potential means learning how to establish a foundation on which to establish new skills and change behavior.

You are continuously expected to learn complex and challenging information and to develop new skills You are constantly faced with the need to accelerate the learning process. To accomplish this, a clear understanding of how you leam best — your learning style — is essential.

Let me share with you some of the well-known learning styles that are research-based and could contribute immensely to improving the quality of education across borders.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS (NASSP) LEARNING STYLE

The NASSP Learning Style was developed in 1979. The main elements of the model are focused on the following:

1) Psychological/environmental;
2) Cognitive;
3) The affective domains; and
4) Information-processing perspective.

The profile it generates suggests strategies on how a child learns productively and effectively. It advises that a child learn through his primary strength and reinforced through the secondary or tertiary strengths.

The cognitive skills are derived from Within’s Group Embedded Figure Test (GLUT). Its perceptual responses are taken from Reinhert’s Edmonds Learning Style Identification Exercise (ELSIE) while the environmental, affective, and psychological items are taken from the Dunn & Dunn Learning Styles Model.

COGNITIVE STYLE PROFILE

The Cognitive Style Profile was developed by Joseph Hill in 1976. The elements of the model consists of the processing of theoretical and qualitative symbols through the auditory and visual, linguistic and quantitative, and the perceptual modalities.

The 15 qualitative elements include empathy, proxemics (social distance), and proprioceptivity, a sixth sense. The modalities of inference are a secondary category that corresponds to critical thinking, contrasting and comparison, relationships between measures, hypothesis development, and some reminiscent of Gloom’s taxonomy.

The cultural determinants suggest that the meaning of symbols is shaped by one’s culture while the family and peers form the main cultural influence.

The sociological stimulus being peer and authority oriented elements of the model is perhaps akin to that of Dunn’s Learning Styles. However, obtaining a cognitive style profile and its cognitive style mapping is a rather elaborate process with its self-report test plus interview component.

COGNITIVE STYLE DELINEATORS

Charles Letteri developed the Cognitive Style Delineators in 1980. The model integrated into its process of profiling based on the storage and retrieval of information, and the six phases of information processing that range from perception to long-term memory.

The model defines the cognitive style of the learner with other cognitive dimension instruments such as being: field dependence/independence; scanning / focusing; breadth of categorization;
cognitive complexity; reflective / impulsive; leveling/sharpening; tolerant/ intolerant.

These are combined in an all-inclusive assessment instrument characterized by its bipolar continuum — extreme ends correlate with being analytic or global.

A child can be any of the following:

Type 1 Learners. These are the above-average successes in academic tasks who are reflective, analytical, focused, complex, categorized narrowly, able to see details sharply, and tolerant
Type 2 Learners. They are between Type 1 and Type 3. The child is only moderately successful in school.
Type 3 Learners. These are the below grade-level performances characterized by being impulsive, global, nonfocused, able to view items only simply, able to categorize broadly, levelers, and intolerant.

The model significantly separates and predicts high academic performers from low academic performers. However, the model can change a Type 3, or even Type 2, into a Type 1 Learner.

CHILD RATING FORM

The Child Rating Form was developed by Manuel Ramirez and Alfredo Castaneda in 1974. In this model, Ramirez and Castaneda posit that learning styles are individual rather than stereotypical group styles. Learning style is defined in terms of the cognitive style dimension of field dependence /independence and cultural differences, surmising that the style predispositions of a child are biocognitive and bicultural.

Field independence is positive because schools prize the traits that correspond. Students who are field sensitive are group oriented, sensitive to the social environment, and positively responsive to adult modeling. They are less sensitive to the spatial incursions of others, less comfortable with trial and error, and less interested in the fine details of tasks that are non-social.

The global traits are the opposite of detail oriented, independent, and sequential (characteristic of analytics).

The Child Rating Form is a direct observation format yielding frequency of behavior scales that could be completed by the teacher or older person in a self-report survey. The traits associated with field sensitivity are also associated with global dimensions and specific sociological elements of authority and peer orientation, as described by Dunn & Dunn.

EDMONDS LEARNING STYLE IDENTIFICATION EXERCISE (ELSIE)

The Edmonds Learning Style Identification Exercise (ELSIE) was developed by Harry Reinert in 1976. According to the model, learning styles are reactions to auditory stimulus. ELSIE is geared primarily
to identification of the perceptual categories in the Dunn & Dunn, Hill, and other instruments. Students should have their initial contact with new material by means of their most efficient perception. The categories of the ELSIE are incorporated directly in the NASSP LSP.

The ELSIE is composed of 50 one-word items read aloud to students, who are then asked to characterize their reactions to the work according to a forced choice among four alternatives: (a) visualization or creation of a mental picture; (b) alphabetical letters in writing (the word spelled out); (c) sound; and (d) activity (an emotional or physical feeling about a word).

(The author is the president of the Center for Learning and Teaching Styles, an affiliate of the International Learning Styles Network, based at St. John’s University in New York. He is a graduate of the AIM Masters in Development management and of the Harvard Graduate School for Professional
Educators. He can be reached at htenedero@yahoo.com)