Meaningful Engaged Learning and Learning Styles

The articles "What Engages Underachieving Middle School Students in Learning?" by Mike Muir and "Are Learning Styles Invalid?" by Richard Felder both address integration of learning styles into the classroom. Muir used real world examples of students who were considered "underachieving", but were actually very bright, who had different ranges of learning styles. Muir discovered through his learning about these different students, that most of them worked best with an engaging classroom that allows them to grow and ask questions and not be afraid to make mistakes. I fully agreed with Muir's statement, "Finding out what motivates our underachieving students will help inform and equip teachers in the struggle to lead all students to academic achievement." Because I believe that, while, we can't always create every single lesson to fit the needs of every single student, it's important to know how each of our students learn, so when we need to help them, we know what kind of learning styles work best.

In the article, "Are Learning Styles Invalid?" Felder looks at the controversy that surrounds the idea of a learning styles model in the classroom. Felder discusses how many studies have concluded that “there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice.” Felder goes on to discuss, how, in fact, many students have benefited from the use of a learning styles model in the classroom. The learning styles model has allowed teachers create effective classrooms, students to understand their learning process and help teachers and students acknowledge the differences in learners in the classroom.  I agree with a great majority of what Felder has to say in his article, and agree whole heartedly with his overall message, that while many people might not believe in the learning styles model, as long as it's being used effectively in the classroom, teachers and students can benefit from it.

I took my own learning styles inventory and found out that I am generally and mostly a visual learner. With my second highest being kinesthetic, followed by auditory. I definitely agree with this conclusion, as, through exploring what each meant, I found myself lining up with the visual learning. The website that I used, said that visual learners need to write everything down so they don't forget it, emphasize key points when taking notes and use other visuals when collecting or sharing information. The website I used also talked about how you can integrate each learning style into the classroom, with some ideas for the visual learning style being, using visual aids, leaving plenty of blank space on worksheets for notes and highlighting major points for note taking.  All of these ideas are very simple and very effective, which is ideal for the classroom.

Citations;
Felder, Richard. "Are Learning Styles Invalid?"
Muir, Mike. "What Engages Underachieving Middle School Students in Learning?"
Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learning Styles (VAK)