lunes, 29 de septiembre de 2008

No one has a better learning style than anyone else and everyone has a mix of them. By understanding the personal learning styles of our students, we can help them to prevent frustrations, to have more tools to learn, to to face situations that are not oriented towards their learning style and to improve their quality of learning.
Using multiple learning styles and multiple intelligences for learning is a relatively new approach that educators have started to recognize.
By applying these two aspects in the classroom you will provide opportunities for authentic learning based on your students' needs, interests and talents and they will be able to demonstrate and share their strengths.
It is true that take into account the learning styles and the multiple intelligences can improve our work and the students' work, but it is also true that in the real world, and real time, these theories are not applicable in the classroom with more than 20 students. Is it possible to adapt your teaching to suit each learning style of such a group? I don't think so. If you have a small group of students, ok, implement these theories and improve your teaching. But if that is not your case, your misson is to help students to be aware of their own learning styles, their strengths and their weaknesses; and also to make them understand that they should open their minds to different learning styles instead of only one.

SO WHAT?

WHAT?

Each person learns and processes information in a different way, that's why we can find a lot of learning styles. These are the particular or individual methods or techniques that help us to learn easily. It would be appropriate for us, as teachers and students, to be aware of our own learning styles and take into account the learning styles of our students to improve our work in the classroom.
There are also the well known Multiple Intelligences, a theory developed by Howard Gardner in 1983. This theory proposes eight different intelligences in the human beings: linguistic, logical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalist. These intelligences serve to have a broader vision of education and methodologies in the classroom and they are directly related to the learning styles.