Different Learning Styles

Taking statistics into consideration, today's teachers need to learn new ways of helping their students learn to become life-long learners. If students haven't gained the art of learning, then they are not going to be able to choose a suitable career path, or be trained effectively within their respective fields.

Each and every one of us receives new information on a daily basis. Understanding this information and processing it will take us a long way towards become life-long learners. Each and every person is different from the other.

Each of us perceives the world in a different way. These perceptions of ours shape up what we think, how we make our decisions, how we prioritize things and so on. What's more, our individual perceptions also help define our natural styles and strengths of learning.

So, since all of us are not alike, then when we approach a certain situation or a learning task, none of us are likely to benefit from the same approach. Each and every individual will have his or her own set of unique learning strengths as well as weaknesses. So, it is very important for teachers to use a variety of methods to reach out to their students.

Most schools follow a certain way and don't encourage the students to lean in their own unique ways. There are many ways to learn, however, the most important methods viz., perceptual modalities, personality patterns, and information processing are discussed here.

It is all about defining our biological reactions to our surroundings and the way in which we process information. This learning style helps us learn what our perception style is and we can then seek out information and process it in the way we perceive it. Teachers should focus on using these techniques in order to reach out to all the students.

It focuses on emotions, values, and attention. Studying the difference between them will allow us to predict the way we will think, feel, and react to different situations.

It distinguishes between the way we think, sense, remember information, and solve problems. Each and every one of us has a distinct way of perceiving, processing, organizing, and retaining different information.

There are different learning styles like auditory, kinesthetic, visual, and tactile. In addition, there are seven categories of learning for humans, viz., the verbal-linguistic types, the musical type, the logical-mathematical type, the spatial type, the bodily- kinesthetic type, the interpersonal type, and lastly, the intra-personal type.

Everyone relies on all or a combination of these modes to process information and learn at an unconscious level. We learn through our senses, but tend to favor one over the rest. Thus, we can safely say that we learn by sight (visually), sound (auditorally), by moving (kinesthetically), and by touch (tactilly).

The listeners are the types that will always do well in school. They tend to remember things that were said to them and then make up their own information. They also carry mental images of dialogs, which in turn help them to remember much of what they learned.

They don't generally do well in traditional schools because such schools don't provide them with right opportunities to do practical work. Both these types perceive information through the nerve endings in the skin and also through muscles, joints, and tendons.

Educators and teachers all over the world need to get together and design programs and courses that address all the learning methods. Instead of using the same traditional, old-school way of teaching, it would be more appropriate to present information to students as they would best learn.