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1.36 LEARNING STYLE -- PSYCHOLOGY ABUSE TERMS, CONCEPTS

=== Learning Style

MEANING: Each person has different ways of understanding new information. Each one will learn more quickly when she/he understands her/his particular method, that is to say her/his preferred learning style. The seven learning styles identified so far are: linguistic, logical, spatial, musical, bodily, interpersonal and intrapersonal. A person may excel at a number of styles while doing poorly in others. Until recently traditional teaching and testing focused only on the first two: linguistic and logical.

RELEVANCE TO ABUSE: To change abusive behavior, each of us needs to learn. If the abuser and the abused process information differently then there can be problems negotiating. For example, some people are primarily 'thinkers' and others 'feelers'. A thinker and a feeler will need to find common ground which might even require counseling.

PERSONAL NOTE FROM RICK DOBLE: As a teacher and also as a fairly smart student who struggled with some subjects, I became aware that each of us learns differently. In a traditional classroom, some will excel while others will be labeled slow or stupid. Often the 'slow/stupid' students are quite bright but are being taught inappropriately for their individual way of processing the information they are learning. As an educator I spent years developing a way of teaching that would appeal to just about any learning style. For example, when I taught beginning photography, virtually all my students were able to learn quite technical information within a four week period. I did this partly to prove that some teachers in my past were bad instructors. If they had been flexible and tried to reach me with different teaching techniques, I might have done much better in some of my subjects.

RELATED WORDS AND PHRASES: teaching, comprehending, understanding, absorbing

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