I hope I didn’t give the impression that I condone the labeling or “pigeon holing†of children; just the opposite in fact! I was in quite a rush when doing the original response and perhaps my thoughts were incomplete or unclear. My understanding of the learning process as a whole is that everyone can learn through all their senses, although each child will naturally gravitate towards a learning style that most interests them. Nobody is exclusively a visual learner, tactile learner, or aural learner, but with that understood, I think there could be advantages to multisensory learning.
The problem, as I see it, is that many educators neglect tactile/kinesthetic learning while focusing on aural and visual learning. While I don’t know the exact reasons for this I suspect that it is because of something like high student to teacher ratios or possibly for economical reasons since the materials are more expensive. Personally I think that children are highly adaptive, but that being said some students invariably adapt better than others. Because of that disparity I think that sometimes adults don’t often recognize that education isn’t meeting children’s needs. At least with my kids I have found that often children will communicate that their needs aren’t being met, and it’s really just a matter of recognizing that communication for what it really is…
For example: I went to elementary school with a boy named Kenny who had difficulties remaining seated, quiet, and focused. Subsequently the teacher spent a lot of time disciplining him and labeling him as a kid that had a ‘discipline problem’ or ‘ADHD’ or some other kind of armchair diagnosis that indicates that the child was the problem. Looking back at that scenario from a parent’s perspective I think that that type of behavior can really underscore a need that kids are trying to communicate. Kenny might be saying “I need something more stimulatingâ€, but all that the teacher saw was that Kenny was disrupting the class. Unfortunately, instead of recognizing that as unique individuals we all learn in slightly (or sometimes more than slightly) different ways and redesigning the learning process to meet everyone’s needs many educators will label these children as having a problem. In some cases these types of “behavioral problems†lead to conditioned learning deficiencies and sometimes even medical diagnosis related to learning disabilities, when in fact a change in the teaching approach may be enough to get them on the right track. It is sad how many children end up medicated simply because they are misunderstood and don’t fit the mold.
RE: the boy v. girl learning styles: I don’t think that boys necessarily learn one way while girls learn another. As a girl growing up I more resembled the ‘boy’ model of learning which is why I prefer to look at it from the perspective of the child’s needs rather than a gender issue. The second article I linked, Teaching the Minds of Boys, had some interesting points one of which was that in the studies cited both boys and girls showed significant gains when the educators made classrooms more “boy friendly.†I’m guessing that presenting the learning material in different ways reinforced the lessons so everyone could benefit. Some of the suggestions I liked from the article were offering varied learning opportunities (experiential, kinesthetic, spatial-visual, purposeful reading/writing) and offering students a choice. There were plenty of articles I chose not to link that advocated segregating boys and girls, i.e. all boy and all girl schools. I don’t agree with this simply because I think children should be given different learning options.
Children know their needs, but (I think) adults often have difficulties hearing them. On a side note I am not necessarily saying that “this approach†works over “that approach†per say, but I do strongly believe that being armed with as much knowledge about learning, and diversity of learning styles, as possible will lead to a series of well thought out and crafted solutions that will fit the needs of ALL our kids.
thanks!
PS – sorry for the quotation-mark-a-thon! 