Learning Styles

So I've been doing a bit of reading on learning styles, because I run bible study groups with uni students and I want to engage them appropriately. And during this process I've been reflecting on my school and university experiences of learning.

We can learn one of two ways - inductive or deductive.

Inductive = observing facts, then interpreting them to reach a conclusion.

Deductive = forming an idea about what might have happened, then looking for the facts to back up the theory.

The deductive approach is flawed because it can result in proof-texting, in other words, trying to prove an assumption, thereby missing the actual meaning of the text.

The inductive approach is flawed because we could ask - as the HSC English syllabus does - what is a fact and who/what has the authority to claim such a title?

But... putting aside the post-modern debate over truth for a moment (hah! Impossible!), the general concensus is inductive learning is better than deductive, as you're more likely to come across the actual meaning of a text.

Now when I did the HSC, most of what we did in English was 'reading' the text, and then straight away applying a critique to it - eg feminist or marxist. I have memories of not really understanding the Shakespeare play we were studying, but forging with interpretation anyway. This is so bad! I totally did not understand the text itself, before moving onto the interpretation stage. But the syllabus supports this style of learning. I mean, my teachers overall did a good job of helping us get the best marks by teaching us how to make judgements and interpret a text through a particular lense, but there is a real possibility 90% of our class couldn't actually articulate the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story in its original context.

This may have been isolated to my school, but I don't think so... I'm pretty sure the Department of Education has written a syllabus sympathetic to this style of learning. However, I think it's really dangerous, because it fosters terrible reading skills. People no longer know how to simply "read" a text, and instead only know how to make judgements and interpret a text based on a set of assumptions.

Yes, I know I've glossed over the entire post modern debate over authorship, but I'm not clued in enough to go there right now! This is just a blog, afterall...

The other thing I've been reflecting on is university.

Now the book I'm reading at the moment encourages you to think about different learning styles - do you learn by seeing, hearing or doing? (Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic?)

Now university is almost solely based on auditory learning - that is, lectures.... with the odd powerpoint (so a bit of visual). There is basically no 'doing'. Journalism was slightly better in this regard - we did 'do' things to complement the learning process. But the rest of the communications degree was completely biased towards auditory learning.

The other bias is towards various stages of the learning cycle.

So some people enjoy the initial stage of learning, others prefer the reflection, others prefer the theorisation stage and still others, like knowing the consequences. Once again, university is very biased towards reflectors and theorists.

So, now that I've raised a whole lot of problems with our education system - I should have some solutions. I don't yet... but then again, I haven't finished reading the book!