People Learn in Different Ways.
According to Cobb at the web site missiontolearn.com, “Learning is the lifelong process of transforming information and experience into knowledge, skills, behaviours, and attitudes”. This definition of learning is important to me as it gives a practical meaning to a word that is widely used and misused today. As a teacher working in a learning environment it is this practical nature of learning that drives the majority of what I do and say to my class. Therefore, I will describe in this essay the different ways in which people learn using my experiences of teaching a class of multi-cultural children in the Middle East. To help with this I will include the work of Kolb and Honey and Mumford as both approaches can be used to effectively compare how people including children learn.
I feel that learning is the implementation of everything we do or say throughout our lives. From the moment we were born, we have learning. Our every day behaviour has been a lifelong practice which has been trained and retrained by repeating and practicing and passing many milestones on the way. Learning to feed ourselves, to walk then run, to use the bathroom, riding a bicycle, writing our name at school, the list is endless, always feeling a great satisfaction when we learnt something new.
Every day we will do the same things, remembering what worked, what didn’t, thinking about how things can be improved. We are continually learning from our visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic senses, processing the information as we move around us. Most people tend to use one of their senses more than the others, though all will be used to a varying degree, it is important to remember that not one teaching method will effectively work for everyone.
There have been many studies on learning styles, but the two I will be referencing will be Kolb and Honey and Mumford.
In 1984, Kolb devised a learning theory depicting that learning takes
Bibliography: * http://www.missiontolearn.com/2009/05/definition-of-learning/ * Clawson J. http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj/COURSES/DOC_SEM_PEDAGOGY/11-27-05%20CH%2003%20Adult%20Learning-3c.pdf * Drew, S. And Bingham, R (2010) The Guide to Learning and Study Skills, Aldershot Gower * Hastings, S (2005) http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2153773