If teachers were taught to respond to global students’ processing styles and environmental preferences, and if they only could be taught to be collegial or authoritative with those youngsters who require one or the other teaching style, fewer students would experience frustration and the inability to succeed in academic classes.

Yet, why do some children fail?

We have to remember that analytic children with a left processing style learn backwards from the way children with a right-processing style learn. Analytics learn sequentially, building details into an understanding and often preferring quiet, bright light, a formal seating arrangement and to continue their task until it has been completed.

On the other hand, globals learn holistically; they need to understand the concept first and then are able to concentrate on the details. They prefer learning with what most teachers would describe as distractors: music, conversation, soft illumination, an informal seating design, snacks, and with lots of mobility.

In addition, globals often are not persistent; that is not how they reach understandings. Instead, globals focus on a problem or a concept, think it through until it makes sense to them, master the idea, and then clue in on the details. After that effort, they need a break. They return to the assignment, work again for a short period of time, and then need another break.

Globals do not like working on one thing at a time; instead, they prefer multiple assignments simultaneously and enjoy them most when permitted to choose the sequence in which, and time when, they may be completed. The paradox is that majority of elementary school children are global, but they are being taught to read analytically.

On the other side, we need to identify the perceptual strengths of our children. Young children tend to be tactual or tactual/kinesthetic, but few teachers introduce new words, concepts or skills initially with manipulatives. They do not understand that students need to be introduced through their primary perceptual preference, reinforced through their secondary and/or tertiary preference, and then required to use the new information in a creative way by making something original.

(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)