Learning styles; Have you found what yours is yet?

There is a constant and generally uninformed debate, that usually occurs when the exam results come out in the summer, about whether the quality of education and learning now is better than decades ago. My answer is always that education and learning is different now and in most subjects you are comparing apples and pears.


One of the major differences is that young people today have usually been helped to discover how they learn. It is quite critical to know whether you are a auditory, visual or kinesthetic learner. Unfortunately when I was at school it was one of a number of secrets that were kept from us. I also do not remember much sharing of learning objectives and course syllabuses. If there had been I might have worked out sooner that I spent a whole term being taught the wrong period of history.


I discovered my learning style totally by accident and for many years could not put a name to it. I just knew that if I wrote something down repeatedly I remembered it and that if I read lots of facts I didn’t.
It would have been nice to have known sooner although in some ways in may have not helped me as much as it does now with the widespread availability of e-learning. I recently had to lay a lawn so dipped into ‘You tube’ discovered a few helpful three minute videos and successfully laid the lawn without having to go anywhere near a book.