my child feature

how does your child learn?

Why do some children do well at school while others trail behind? Dr Yvonne Eve Walus talks to Barbara Prashnig, Director of the Creative Learning Centre in Aukland about the different styles of learning

Imagine a child, an ordinary preschooler. She’s probably alert, hungry for fairytales, eager to bake a cake with a pretend set of kitchen dishes. In other words, she wants to learn new things. All children are eager to learn. But then something happens when they go to school: some children excel at learning, others seem to be left behind. Some children even turn into rebels. Barbara Prashnig explains the reasons, and the solutions.”

Why would some children be left behind at school?

We have many excellent schools and many dedicated teachers. But most education institutions are too traditional and classroom teaching is still frontal with little stimulation for all the senses. They still believe in making children sit upright at a desk in brightly lit rooms and listening to the lesson, reading and writing.”

And that’s a bad idea because....?

“To begin with, scientific research tells us that sitting up straight on a hard chair places too much strain on our whole body. Think about it: when you sit, approximately 75% of your body weight has to be supported by 10 square centimetres of bone. No wonder many children study a lot better if we allow them to sit on beanbags, cushions or the bed! And bright light can be the cause of stress in a child whose preference is to study in a dimly lit area. As to the part about listening, that’s not everybody’s cup of tea, or, to put it scientifically once again, listening to subject content in lecture-type situations goes against many children’s Learning Styles.”

What are learning styles and why is it important for parents to know about them?

“A Learning Style (LS) is every child’s unique way of absorbing and understanding new and complex information. Children learn new things every day. When left to their own devices, they will instinctively learn the way that works best for them: in other words, they will learn using their own unique LS. But when they go to school, they are suddenly forced to learn in a way that’s acceptable to the school system. Sadly though, the officially accepted, traditional way is not always the optimal way for every child. This mismatch in Learning and Teaching Styles leads to children not being able to concentrate in the classroom, and as a result becoming ‘disruptive and difficult’, often ‘poor performers’ or worse, ‘school drop-outs’.”

do schools cater to children's learning styles?

“When it comes to Learning Styles, there is no such thing as typical. There are 49 elements in the LS Pyramid, and together they can form literally millions of combinations. Besides, Learning Styles are not about labelling. Labelling is deceptive - it would be easy to label pupils as X, Y or Z and then treat them accordingly - but it would certainly be misleading because styles change during childhood and human beings can also be very flexible.

“Take Tanya, who is eight, for example. She loves reading and completing jigsaw puzzles. Her teacher says she has a lot of potential, but she simply doesn’t want to learn. In class, she’s forever looking down, cracking her knuckles or folding the corners of her books, or doodling on the margins. The teacher says this proves she’s not listening. In fact, Tanya is listening. She’s trying to listen so intently, she has to keep her hands busy to help her along. In LS terminology, we would say that Tanya is a visual (words-based) and tactile learner, with a non-preference for auditory input. But of course that’s only a small portion of Tanya’s Learning Style: we don’t yet know whether she has analytic or holistic tendencies, what her environmental preferences are, whether she needs bright or dim light, likes to learn alone or in a group, what motivates her, what her persistence is like, and so on.

“A child’s greatest asset is their sense of self-worth. It comes from ‘being good at’ things. After primary school many teenagers find secondary school difficult and unpleasant. They struggle with academic learning and often come to resent school. This is a clear sign of mismatched LS and parents need to learn about LS to understand how they can help.”

To analyse your child’s Learning Style try the online questionnaire at www.networkpress.co.uk

The Learning Styles Analysis Pyramid

Different Learning Styles

If you ask a child who needs movement to sit still and memorise a times table, you’re unlikely to get good results. You would do far better if you allowed them to walk around or play hopscotch on a makeshift map of times-tables.
Tactile children, would love to use Koosh balls and learn better by using self-correcting learning tools and other hands-on activities.
Auditory children benefit from making tapes of their lessons (either recording their teachers in class, or reading the material themselves out loud).
Visual children may make schoolwork more interesting by drawing charts, mind maps and using colours.

How can parents help?

Show interest and enquire about the learning process. Become aware of what your child is not saying: doesn’t she have an overview, is she struggling with details, does she find a particular lesson disturbing (dissecting frogs, learning about poverty or war)? It is important that learning feels good, especially to a child who is internally kinesthetic.
Create learning opportunities for your child. Read aloud and encourage reading for pleasure. Take your children on educational outings (museums, the zoo, libraries, theatre, classical concerts). Play games to increase their vocabulary, arithmetic ability and logical reasoning. Make sure they know how to use dictionaries, maps and encyclopaedias.
Enhance creativity with make-belief games and interesting projects (set up a historic play, mime a lesson, write a poem).
Brain, the Final Frontier
Did you know that:
Research studies consistently find that the first three years of life are critical to the emotional and intellectual development of a child. During these early years, 75 percent of brain growth is completed.
Conversely, a recent study discovered that the brains of teenagers are not yet mature when it comes to emotional development, which is why teenagers appear to act like adults the one moment, then switch to child-like behaviour the next.
Early in life (in the womb, and for the first 18 months of a baby’s life), the brain seems to undergo a pruning process that follows the principle of "use-it-or-lose-it": those neural connections (synapses) that get exercised are retained, while those that don't are lost. A similar process seems to happen in the teenage years.

Barbara Prashnig’s book “The Power of Diversity” Network Press www.networkpress.co.uk ) is an easy-to-read handbook and is a great source of information for teachers and parents alike.