Learning style encompasses at least 21 different variables, including each person’s environmental, emotional, sociological, physiological, and cognitive-processing preferences.

Thus only a comprehensive instrument should be used to diagnose students’ styles, because the very variable not examined with one instrument may be vital to the academic functioning of an individual.

Teachers cannot correctly identify all the elements of learning style because some aspects of style are not observable, even to the experienced eye.

In addition, teachers often misinterpret behaviors and misunderstand symptoms. It is crucial to use a reliable and valid instrument to identify individuals’ learning styles; an unreliable or invalid instrument can provide erroneous information.

It is noteworthy to know that three-fifths of learning style is genetic; the remainder, apart from persistence, develops through experience.

Individual responses to sound, light, temperature, seating arrangements, perceptual strengths, intake, time-of-day, and mobility are biological, whereas sociological preferences, motivation, responsibility (which correlates with conformity), and structure versus need-for-providing-self-direction, are thought to be developmental. The significant differences among the learning styles of children in diverse cultures tend to support this theory.

The one variable with which there may be disagreement is persistence.

Analytics tend to be more persistent than globals; globals tend to concentrate (on difficult academic studies) for relatively short periods of time, need frequent breaks, and work on several different tasks simultaneously.

Once strongly analytic students begin a task, they appear to have a strong emotional need to complete it. These data have not yet been published previously because additional study is warranted.

Every person has a learning style and every person has learning-style strengths. People tend to learn more when taught with their own strengths than when taught with the teacher’s strengths.

No learning style is better or worse than another. Each style encompasses similar intelligence ranges.

Students tend to learn and remember better, and enjoy learning more when they are taught through their learning style preferences.

(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)