Recognizing Different Learning Styles for Successful Communication and Teamwork

“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” ― Mark Twain

One of the biggest global problems related to education is that everyone has a different learning style, and yet, more often than not, schools are oriented and biased towards particular learning styles more than the others. This results in unnecessary struggles and suboptimal conditions to get that universal right to education we all deserve, and the consequence is not only do the people who struggle to learn in the orthodox manner have a harder time in life after school (if they even finish), others might not even recognize these struggles and continue to reinforce and perpetuate structures that make life harder for people with different learning styles.

If you tested the animal kingdom by who could climb trees and beat their chests, then primates would be biased in favor of this while fish, birds, and reptiles would be seen as unintelligent. This kind of analogy means that we don’t nurture the hidden talents that also arise from an individual’s personal learning style, and we also lose potential talent. An example of this is one of A4A’s partners, iSTEM, which is focused on providing learning resources for blind students in India, who are auditory learners. Their particular project is focused on providing better digital resources for scanning text and reading so that it’s more accurate and comprehendible, due to how some technologies they are using are either outdated or inadequate, leading to problems where if there is a table or a box of text separate from the main text, OCR readers might accidentally read through those as one line and interrupt the flow of the main body of text instead of treating them as separate documents.

For those who don’t have to live with visual impairment, we are unfortunately privileged to not only not recognize the obstacles blind students must face, but how financial limitations, educational systems, and auditory learners all compound into deep societal problems that only the social entrepreneur is willing to tackle.

A quick summary of eight learning styles taken from here:

● Visual learning style

● Auditory learning style

● Kinesthetic learning style

● Reading/Writing

● Logical/analytical learners

● Social/linguistic learners

● Solitary learners

● Nature learners

By being aware of these kinds of learning styles, you can factor into consideration even the individuals who may not realize that this is their preferred learning style and create stronger impetus to be sensitive to not just your colleagues at work who find themselves bored at meetings or during presentations, but also for constituents. To find your own learning style and also poll your colleagues, you can find several places for free quizzes to determine it.

If effective learning comes from effective communication, then effective communication leads to better relationships, clarity, motivation, inspiration, and appreciation. Your sensitivity towards others and for others will win a lot of support, financially, emotionally, socially, and professionally