Second Definition Essay Outline

Joshua Cotteen
Professor Murphy
English 051
Definition Essay
21 March 2009

Everyone learns differently:

I. Contrary to what people think, everyone does learn differently.

II. Just because everyone thinks, acts, and understands differently, why would that mean people learn different than others?

III. Two sources

a. David Kolb

1. Kolb theorized that people develop preferences for different learning styles in the same way that they develop any other sort of style, i.e. - management, leadership, negotiating etc.

2. He found that the four combinations of perceiving and processing determine the four learning styles.

3. The learning cycle involves four processes that must be present for learning to occur:

a. Activist - Active Experimentation (simulations, case study, homework); Training approach - Problem solving, small group discussions, peer feedback, and homework all helpful.

b. Reflector - Reflective Observation (logs, journals, brainstorming); Training approach - Lectures are helpful; trainer should provide expert interpretation.

c. Theorist - Abstract Conceptualization (lecture, papers, analogies); Training approach - Case studies, theory readings and thinking alone helps; almost everything else, including talking with experts, is not helpful.

d. Pragmatist - Concrete Experience (laboratories, field work, observations); Training approach - Peer feedback is helpful; activities should apply skills; trainer is coach/helper for a self- directed autonomous learner.

b. Dr. Rita Dunn and Dr. Kenneth Dunn

1. Dunn and Dunn define learning style as the way in which individual learners begin to concentrate on, process, and retain new and difficult material.

a. It is a combination of many biological and experiential characteristics that work on their own or together as a unit to contribute to learning.

b. This interaction with new information is unique for each individual.

2. The Dunn and Dunn Learning Style Model contains five variables that affect learners and their ability to learn.

a. Since learners are affected by their immediate environment, own emotionality, sociological preferences, physiological characteristics, and processing inclinations, these variables must be considered when creating instruction that is effective for individual learners.

b. Individual learning styles make identical instruction effective for some students and ineffective for others.

3. Since the learning style factors identified by Dunn and Dunn are conditions external to the learner, they have a greater effect on external instructional conditions rather than the learner’s internal learning strategies.

a. The structure of the learning environment and the sequencing and introduction of instruction should be matched to each individual child’s learning style.

4. Research has also shown that higher grade point averages are achieved when there is a close match between students’ learning styles and their teachers’ teaching styles.

a. Further studies have revealed that when students’ characteristics were accommodated by an instructional process that was responsive to their learning style, achievement scores could be expected to be seventy-five percent of one standard deviation higher than for students whose learning styles weren’t accommodated.

b. Given the attention to failing and poorly achieving students in the United States, accommodating individual learning styles has important implications for our educational system (Shaughnessy, 1998).

IV. I have found right in my own family that people learn differently.

a. My Mother has to read the material out loud and then will understand it.

b. My Brother can just close his eyes and see the dry erase-board with the material on it.

c. My Father has to read it and make an outline of the chapter to learn the material well.

d. I myself have to go to the lecture and hear the teacher explain it, while writing on the dry erase-board, and then read the info myself.

e. It is clear from my own observations that people learn differently.

V. Fusing the expert opinion and my own opinion together.

a. Dr. David Kolb and I both believe and show that people learn differently.

VI. Dr. Kolb and I both believe that there are multiple ways for people to learn and not only one.

a. Unfortuently there are still schools (Including colleges) that hasn’t come to this understanding and still believe that if you don’t learn by listening to the lecture and understand it, there must be something wrong with you.

b. In reality, there isn’t anything wrong with the person, we just learn differently.