As I was reading the article assigned for this week, I was thinking to myself that the learning styles sounded familiar. I believe some schools, including the one that I teach at is trying to achieve the learning styles described in the article. However, I am not sure if there are schools that have witnessed the emergence of these learning styles in their students.
I think I have had the privilege to witness a few students who displayed one or two of the learning styles. One common trait that I see among these few students are motivation to learn and keen interest in their work. Most of my other students are either not used to the lack of spoon feeding, looking for short cuts, or are distracted with games, having fun and so on. So, agency is one of the key contributing factors here.
I agree with that which was raised in class about scaffolding as well. The success of this lies in well designed tasks as well as teachers with the relevant skills and experience.
So, to me, it is a great idea but not an easy one to achieve at all. Besides the above,it would also need full support from all involved, including the management, teachers, parents, students, and the policy makers too.
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Hi Chiayen! Agree with you about our discussion in class about "scaffolding". I also believe that it is rather important for the success of the lesson.The points raised by Dr Towndrow and Joshua were very thought provoking - how Dr Towndrow felt that doing the worksheet at the end of the lesson kind of defeated the purpose of having such a lesson and Joshua's point about taking the children to a particular venue to do the activity when it could have been done in school. These are very good points that they raised. It does make us think very carefully about the designing of appropriate lessons. And as you mentioned, it also depends on the teachers' "relevant skills". Maybe this is where 'collaborative' comes in....? And I absolutely agree wit you about needing the "full support from" all the stakeholders such the policy makers, parents, students and teachers to make this a success.
ReplyDeleteHi Chiayen! yes, the designing of the task is very important. Another influencing aspect is the subject, if it is suitable for the learning style. The example in the article is history, which is a good choice, the concrete content subject with real characters and events like a story. What if it is the abstract subject like Math or Chinese poem?
ReplyDeleteThus the conclusion cannot be made to say new learning styles are always good and should be adopted. Critical thinking should take place everywhere.
I agree with your ideas, Chiayen. The innovation underlying the neomillenial learning styles is no doubt enticing. It is also applicable to a range of major subjects such as Math, Science, Social Science, and English and Literature. We however ought not to lose sight of other potential problems. For one, as the article itself notes on p.17, Sheingold and Frederiksen (1994) saw the need to change, “the standards by which student achievements are judged and the methods by which students’ accomplishments are assessed.” In addition, as quoted in the article, Russell (2006) envisaged the call for “identifying learning measures that are aligned with and sensitive to the types of learning that may occur when students work with computers.”
ReplyDeleteMore importantly, when Dieterle,et.al. concluded that “fluency in multimedia is often used” I wonder how would learners benefit from neomillenial learning styles without prior acquisition of basic skills.
Truly, applying the neomillenial learning in the curriculum entails a close examination of the teaching contexts, content, applicability to the types of learners, and the like.