The different learning styles

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THE DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES
Introduction
Learning is a cognitive process of acquiring skills and knowledge about a certain area of interest. It is a continuous process and not limited to any time or age but the moment you are born, learning starts and it stops at death. Therefore, it can be termed as the accumulation of knowledge and experience about life. On the other hand, a style means just a different manner in which something is done. For our case it is the way of expressing the skills and knowledge to the learners. Learning styles is a wider range of competitive and argued hypothesis aiming to account for the deviation in an individuals’ learning. The theories suggest that each person can be grouped according to the styles in which they have acquired knowledge and skills. Despite that the theories offer differing views on the categorization of the styles and their respective definitions.
The only common idea is that each person differs in the way they learn. The concept of individual learning style become famous in the year 1970s and with it there has been a lot of influence on education despite the criticism it has been offered from other researchers. We have a proposal suggesting that teachers should assess their students and their learning styles so that they adapt a common method that will suit both the students in their process of learning. The idea lacks ample evidence that if a student is taught in his/her learning style will produce the best result.

We, therefore, have differing learning styles models and according to Diaz, David and Ryan (134) there has been literature that has identified 71 models but only talked about few as they are described below:
Models of learning styles
First, we have David Kolb’s model which is based on the experiential learning. The approach is that there exist two ways of grasping knowledge, skills and experience for students. We have the concrete experience approach and the abstract conceptualization. Additionally, we have two related ways in which experience can be transformed and we have active experimentation where an individual participates in the process by either doing an action related to the learning activity and also another way is through reflective observation.
According to this model it forms a learning cycle from experiencing, observation, conceptualizing and experimentation and back to experience forming an ideal learning process. As an individual tries to incorporate all the four he may tend to like the following learning styles: Accommodator which equals to concrete experience and active experiments that are done which renders someone strong in practical doing and a perfect example here is the physical therapists or the converger method which involves abstract conceptualization and active experiment and the outcome is having someone who is strong in practical by theory application and here we find people like engineers or diverger where we have concrete experience and just reflective observation coming up with a student who is strong in imagination ability plus discussion and most of the people are the social workers and lastly we have the one for the assimilator where it involves abstract conceptualization plus the reflective observation. It makes one stronger in inductive thinking and able to create theories for example here we have the philosophers. The model having been rendered the preferred it faces some weaknesses still (Sun, Koun-tem, Yuan-cheng Lin, and Chia-jui, Yu, 1414).
Second, we have Peter Honey and Alan Mumford’s model, who adapted Kolb’s model but they renamed the learning cycle stages according to the managerial experience. We therefore have the first which is getting the experience, evaluation, deciding, and designing next steps. Second, the stages were then aligned to learning styles and we have four of them involving activist, reflector, theorist, and pragmatist. The styles are believed to be preferences that can be acquired and adapted. This can be done through will or changing circumstances and not just being characteristics personalities that are fixed.
Thirdly, we have the learning modalities model that is based on the visual modality where by one learns through seeing pictures, shapes, sculptures and paintings, auditory modality where the learning takes place through hearing such things such as tone, rhythms, chants, listening and kinesthetic modality where the learning is based on gestures, body movements, object manipulation and positioning. According to this model the strength of the learning modalities can occur on their own or in combination. It is also reported that strength of the learning modalities is different from the preferences. The model though faces a lot of criticism being termed as pseudoscience or sometimes psychological urban fable (Felder, Richard, and Joni, 106).
Fourth, the Anthony Gregorc’s model which describes learning styles depending on how individuals get knowledge and different process of information processing. It hints that individual perceptual power determines the learning styles and the perceptual qualities here are the abstract and concrete and two powers of ordering involving random and sequential. Concrete therefore is involved with caption of information using five senses while on the other hand abstract involves: idea understanding, qualities and concepts that you cannot see (Felder & Richard, 20).
Lastly, we have the cognitive approaches which were developed to teachers to test students in college and it was found that the following learning styles were being displayed: avoidant, participative, competitive, collaborative, dependent and independent. The model is based on cognitive dimensions. The cognitive styles are basically and relatively non-judgmental (Felder & Richard, 20).
Conclusion
Having different models highlighting different learning styles there is a need for incorporating the different styles of learning into one model. This is in support that all the styles discussed above and many others all apply in a learning experience for the students. So scientists should try to form a model that includes all the aspects of learning and for my case, Kolb’s model has to some extent illustrated many learning styles as compared to others.
Works Cited
Diaz, David & Ryan Cartnal. “Students’ learning styles in two classes: Online distance learning and equivalent on-campus.” College teaching 47.4 (2011): 130-135.
Sun, Koun-tem, Yuan-cheng Lin, & Chia-jui Yu. “A study on learning effect among different learning styles in a Web-based lab of science for elementary school students.” Computers & Education 50.4 (2013): 1411-1422.
Felder, Richard & Joni Spurlin. “Applications, reliability and validity of the index of learning styles.” International journal of engineering education 21.1 (2012): 103-112.
Felder, Richard M. “Matters of style.” ASEE prism 6.4 (2011): 18-23.