How To Get Your Kids To See the Light! Or Feel It! Or Hear It!

Learning Modalities for Home Educators

This was the third talk I presented at the 2010 Minnesota Catholic Home Educator's Conference this weekend.  Attendance was amazing.  This was the last slot of the day (3:00) and I had about 40 attendees.

This presentation has 57 slides, which makes it far too large to post all here.  I did have some requests for more data, though. I thought I would include some of those things.  Feel free to make requests for more information in the com box.

This was one diagram I was asked to include.  It is from:

The Quality Teaching Blog

at the Center for Quality Teaching and Learning and it is a diagram showing how to apply Learning Modalities to Learning Styles.  The Learning Modalities are in the yellow areas.  The Learning Styles are in the colored text on the outside of the diagram.

Individual learning style is a combination of environmental, emotional, sociological, and physical responses that characterize how each person learns.  Learning style is a function of heredity and experience, and develops individually over the life span.

Now, we did not delve into Learning Styles in our discussion because we were focusing specifically on how to adapt your teaching to a persons primary Learning Modality or how to incorporate Multi-sensory teaching, in case of multiple modalities in the home.

The Learning Styles in this diagram are based on Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory (ELT). 
A typical presentation of Kolb's two continuums is that the east-west axis is called the Processing Continuum (how we approach a task - either doing or watching), and the north-south axis is called the Perception Continuum (our emotional response, or how we think or feel about it).  These learning styles are the combination of two lines of axis (continuums) each formed between what Kolb calls 'dialectically related modes' of 'grasping experience' (doing or watching), and 'transforming experience' (feeling or thinking).  The result of these two decisions produces (and helps to form throughout our lives) the preferred learning style, hence the two-by-two matrix . We choose a way of 'grasping the experience', which defines our approach to it, and we choose a way to 'transform the experience' into something meaningful and usable, which defines our emotional response to the experience. Our learning style is a product of these two choice decisions:

1. how to approach a task - preferring to (a) watch or (b) do , and
2. our emotional response to the experience - preferring to (a) think or (b) feel.

In other words we choose our approach to the task or experience ('grasping the experience') by opting for 1(a) or 1(b):

• 1(a) - though watching others involved in the experience and reflecting on what happens (watching) or 
• 1(b) - through 'jumping straight in' and just doing it (doing)

And at the same time we choose how to emotionally transform the experience into something meaningful and useful by opting for 2(a) or 2(b):

• 2(a) - through gaining new information by thinking, analyzing, or planning (thinking) or 
• 2(b) - through experiencing the 'concrete, tangible, felt qualities of the world' (feeling)

The combination of these two choices produces a preferred learning style.

Interestingly enough, these tend to coincide with our Learning Modality!  So, Kinesthetic Learners are usually "Sensing Doers".  Tactile Learners are usually "Thinking Doers".  Visual Learners are usually "Sensing Watchers" and Auditory Learners are usually "Thinking Watchers".

Those quadrants can help you understand how those learners approach problems and learn.

Tomorrow I will add more information from my presentation.  Have a pleasant evening!