learning tasks or associations which are easy for the members of some species, and on the other end are those learning tasks for which those members are not prepared at all and cannot learn them. In the middle of the continuum fall those tasks and associations for which the members are neither prepared nor unprepared. They can learn such tasks, but only with great difficulty and persistence. T HE L EARNER : L EARNING S TYLES You may have observed that some children, sometimes from the same family, perform well in school whereas others do not.
There has been a great deal of research on learning styles over the last several decades. It demonstrates the differences in the way people learn within the same class, culture, community or socio- economic group and those belonging to different groups. Learning style may be defined as ‘a learner’s consistent way of responding to and using stimuli in the context of learning ’. In other words, it is ‘the way in which each learner begins to concentrate, processes, and retains new and complex information’ .
It may be noted that this interaction occurs differently for everyone. For example, you may have noticed that children in your class are unique in their personalities, cultural experiences, and values. Different students prefer different learning environments, learning modalities and they all have unique strengths, talents, and weaknesses. Therefore, it is necessary to examine each individual’s personal characteristics to determine what is most likely to trigger each learner’s concentration, maintain it, respond to her or his natural processing style and facilitate long-term memory.
There are various instruments which are used to determine a student’s learning style. Learning styles are mainly derived from Perceptual Modality, Information Processing, and Personality Patterns. A brief description of these approaches are given below: . Perceptual Modality are biologically-based reactions to the physical environment.
It refers to the preferences of persons through which they take in information such as auditory, visual, smell, kinesthetic, and tactile. . Information Processing distinguishes between the way we are structured to think, solve problems, and remember information. This may be