Looking back at my learning experiences from K through 12 and upwards, I find that no one strategy was any more effective than the others. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was perhaps a combination of styles and strategies provided my teachers/instructors. For instance, during my early elementary years, rote memorization, ancient-looking filmstrips/ movies and teacher centric instruction ruled the day with very little hands-on experience. Of course, back then we also had plenty of field trips to support material in class. Very little of this changed in junior high and high school, unless you took Chemistry, advanced Biology and a few other specialty classes. Here you were expected to get your “hands dirty,” so to speak as activities reinforced or ran concurrent with lecture.
I have found that I have a different learning style for each subject and that I struggle if needed to adapt a new strategy to a particular subject. For instance, take math. I am more of an active/sequential/visual learner who needs to see things worked out and explained step by step, perhaps several times before I feel comfortable trying a problem on my own. I would be totally lost, however, if asked to try a new style. This is my comfort zone and anything else just decreases the likelihood of my understanding the concept. With regards to the Montgomery/Groat article, I find myself identifying with Cluster 1. The primary learning style is dependent/participant/Competitive and the primary teaching style is Expert/Formal Authority, with a focus on exams/Grades emphasized, lectures with teacher centered questions, although I believe that students must be able to be an active participant in this or any other style of learning/teaching.
So what worked and what didn’t? This is what I found to be true in order for me to be successful. Teacher lead discussions with active student participation, a personable delivery that doesn’t lull the student to sleep, engaging supportive material: movies, movie clips, connecting material to real world applications/situations or “what if’s,” and instructors willing to take a different approach/perspective and even, incredibly, admit when they don’t know or have made a mistake. I find that that fallibility evens the landscape and helps the student better connect to the instructor. What didn’t work: bland, stale lectures, handouts without explanation, relevance or discussion, an authoritarian instructor who can never be challenged, no real world connections or hands-on experience. These strategies spelled out ultimate failure, yes I may have passed the class but my level of understanding was very low.
In order, for teachers and students to achieve the success that they want, balance must be created. For each learning style, there is a different teaching strategy. When you factor in, on average, 27 students in a classroom, a teacher must be adaptive. No one teacher is going to be able to reach that many students because each and everyone probably learns best with differing strategies. Perhaps the best teacher is a juggler, able to differentiate her teaching strategies based on the whole of their classroom. Experimenting and rotating how materials are presented and even more importantly, how students are assessed on their knowledge. The one year I taught fourth grade I gave my students options on how they could show me that they understood the material. For instance, in our unit on the “Anishnabeg or Three Tribes” I allowed my students to write a report (blah), create a diorama, make a poster, write a song, act out a skit that was related to one or all the tribes, or in a group, with some help from their parents, provide a small feast of foods that the tribes would have eaten. This assessment went better than I had expected as the children were extremely eager to show off what they had done. This project also helped the students with the required chapter test from the text, as each student showed at least a ½ grade bump in their scores. That I believe is the key, since we cannot possible employ all strategies at once, allow for different learning by changing up our teaching strategies and how we assess our students.
Excellent Chris! I enjoyed reading your reflections on this topic. The nice thing about technology is that it allows students to even have more choices. They can write a song and use Garage Band for instance to add instrumentation. They can use the Internet to find interesting recipes.
ReplyDeleteThat is very interesting that the student's grades went up. It is more work for you, but the reward is great.