EDUCATORS have been quick to classify students who require special attention with a variety of negative labels — Learning Disabled (LD), Emotionally Handicapped (EH), Emotionally Disturbed (ED), Educationally Disadvantaged (ED), Educable Mentally Retarded (EMR), and so forth.

Even positive nomenclatures, like Special Education (SPED) or Gifted Education (GE), have taken on a negative aura because children categorized as such differ in the amount of attention they require from teachers.

When examining why these youngsters require more attention, it becomes evident that they do not learn like their classmates do. The majority of SPED students are global processors with tactual and kinesthetic-perceptual strengths (Kyriacou & Dunn, 1994).

LEARNING STYLES OF SPED STUDENTS

Early correlational research examined the learning styles of LD students, compared them with those of EMR students and the gifted and found significant differences between those groups.

Later, researchers synthesized the differences between SPED and Regular Ed (REGED) students and contrasted the styles among various SPED classifications. In addition, there were also reported findings on the learning styles of reading-disabled youngsters.

However, even after extensive differences in learning style had been widely documented, it was reported that SPED teachers, who had not been taught to use learning-style approaches in the teacher education programs they attended, resisted using them.

Despite the negativism associated with children who learn differently from their same aged counterparts, practitioners have documented that many officially classified LD, EH, and SPED students significantly improved their achievement after they were taught with approaches and resources that complemented their learning styles.

For example, after only two years of learning-style-based instruction, SPED students in a certain school achieved statistically higher standardized achievement test scores than their counterparts who had not experienced learning-style-responsive teaching.

Some achieved as well as the regular high school students.

CONTRIBUTION

According to the research, the Dunn and Dunn Learning-Style Model contributed to statistically higher standardized achievement test scores for SPED students across the nation during the 20-year period (1970-1990) covered by its investigations. Significantly higher gains were documented for poorly achieving and SPED students in urban, suburban and rural schools.

More recently, a teacher compared the effects of learning style responsive teaching strategies on the short- and long-term science achievement, attitudes, and behaviors of SPED adolescents. Initially he taught them traditionally. Then each week the teacher added another learning style responsive strategy such as soft lighting, informal seating, tactual and then kinesthetic resources as their primary instructional method, and global introductions to each new and difficult lesson.

At the end of a series of eight experimental treatments, the teacher returned to traditional teaching to determine its relative effects on short and long-term achievement. Each set of pretest and post-test data documented the statistically higher short- and long-term achievement gained and positive attitudes evidenced with learning styles in contrast with traditional teaching. The most noteworthy effect was the contrast in behaviors of these adolescents.

In the traditional setting, lateness, absences, and unruly acts were everyday occurrences and the complaints of teachers throughout the school. As each learning-style strategies were introduced, lateness disappeared, absences were reduced, and students’ behaviors became appropriate and polite!

The logical conclusion of the following series of experimental studies must be that:
(a) Many teachers inappropriately classify students as SPED because most do not learn conventionally

(b) Children who learn differently can achieve, but require learning-style responsive instruction to do so

(c) Many teachers are either unfamiliar with, or reluctant to use, learning-style responsive instruction

(d) It is immoral, and it should be illegal, for professional teachers to negatively classify children who learn differently instead of teaching them the way they learn.

(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 can be reached at htenedero@yahoo.com)