What we have seen thus far - Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences - together constitute a new, exciting and holistic framework for the understanding of learning and the re-engineering of education. Necessarily, this new framework calls us to a review of our basic mind-sets - or paradigms — on education.

Old Thinking #1: On The Value or Purpose of Assessment

Assessment is valuable for figuring out student success and failure, making comparisons among students and determining their academic ranking.

Breakthrough Paradigm #1

Assessment is a tool for drawing out the uniqueness of each student and must be used to identify
areas of learning that need enhancement.

Old Thinking #2: On The Goal of Education and Teaching

The primary goal of education is defined by curriculum content: the acquisition and memorization of data and textbook knowledge. Successful teaching enables students to achieve high scores in standard paper-and-pencil tests.

Breakthrough Paradigm #2

The focus on curriculum must be balanced by an equal focus on the acquisition of understanding and of real-life skills, as well as the development of creative and critical thinking.

Successful teaching is teaching for life, whereby learning becomes personally relevant and lifelong for each student.

Old Thinking #3: On The Role of Teachers and Students

Inside the classroom, teachers are the sole source of and authority on knowledge.

Students are no more than passive recipients of knowledge.

Breakthrough Paradigm #3

The best learning environment is one that is learner-centered whereby the teacher acts largely as a facilitator of learning, leading students to personal, hands-on discovery. Wherever the are allowed meaningful participation in their own learning, students become more responsive and more responsible.

Old Thinking #4: On Understanding Human Development

The behaviorist model is ideal for use by educators in understanding human development.

It proposes that students are the subjects ... identify, demand and measure all the desired outcomes ... reward the desired and punish the undesired. This is the sole ideal to be used by educators in understanding human development.

Breakthrough Paradigm #4

A holistic and humanistic model should be used to understand human development.

Old Thinking #5: On The Ideal Assessment Instrument

Like teaching and learning, assessment instruments can and should be standardized, since all students learn basically in the same way. Uniform, norm-based, mono-modal instruments
focusing on linguistic and logical mathematical intelligences are the best and only effective means of testing. Besides, pencil-and-paper tests are also highly efficient — easy to administer, score and evaluate — and thus highly desirable for assessment purposes.

Breakthrough Paradigm #5

Every student learns differently and has a unique “intelligence mix.” Assessment instruments and procedures must take account of these differences.

Thus, individualized, multiformal multimodal instruments giving due consideration to a student’s personal styles, needs and strengths would be ideal for assessment purposes.

The author: Henry S. Tenedero 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 is the author of the following books: Cooking Up A Creative Genius; The HI CLASS Teacher, Breakthrough Ideas in Education; and Using Passion and Laughter in Your Presentations. He can be reached at htenedero@yahoo.com