Definition of “teaching style”
It is fairly said that not everything is bad in traditional education, as well as in innovative one – not everything is good. Nevertheless, there is a clear boundary between these forms of education.
of the process:
In traditional teaching, a child is seen as an object of educational and pedagogical influence within the framework of the position “every pupil should know something and be able to do it”, while in innovative teaching – as a subject of educational activity within the framework of the position “every pupil should, can and wants to know something and be able to do it taking into account his or her individuality”.
According to B. Lou Liver, “…all students, without exception, can learn. The only thing they may not be able to do is to learn as directed by a particular program, textbook or teacher. In other words, this is a problem that was not previously faced with traditional didactics at all, namely, a possible “conflict of styles”, i.e. the mismatch between the cognitive style of a student and different aspects of the educational environment.
To identify individual differences in cognitive activity among students
the concept of “learning style” was introduced. Learning styles are individual. Read more nere https://argoprep.com/blog/learning-styles-series-the-interpersonal-learner/
the ways in which information is absorbed into learning activities that characterize the way information is obtained, processed, reproduced and controlled. Thus, they characterize the typical features of intellectual activity.
This term, which appeared in the Western psychological and pedagogical literature in the 1970s, characterized a typical for a given individual approach to the process of his or her learning.
D.A. Kolba’s ideas were the most popular. He highlighted such polar dimensions of students’ intellectual capabilities as specificity/abstractiveness of thinking and tendency to process information at the action or observation level. In his opinion, there are four stages (cycles) of learning activity.
First, the pupil gets acquainted with a certain situation by accumulating concrete experience, then there is the stage of reflexive observation of what is going on, followed by conceptualization of the observation results and formation of theoretical concepts, which are later tested on the basis of practical experimentation.
Thus, four styles of teaching are distinguished in the Kolba model:
- reflexive – students learn by synthesizing and integrating information from different sources, they like group work, they are inclined to innovation.and have a rich imagination, are happy to be involved in solving problems, although not always finish their work;
- Theoretical – students perceive and process information in a mode of abstract reasoning and reflection, highly value logic and consistent thinking, tend to formulate theories and investigate facts, learn through the study of ideas, value expert opinion and the opportunity to participate in discussions, have good abilities in planning their own activities;
- pragmatic – students perceive information at the level of general ideas, focusing on their practical implementation, it is important for them to know how things are arranged and how they work, prefer to solve a single problem, seek to test theories, are strategic, tolerant of uncertainty, effective in making decisions;
4.Activity – students perceive information at the level of concrete impressions and learn from it on the basis of subject actions, they like to do concrete things, are not afraid to take risks and experiment, are inclined to lead and manage other people in order to obtain necessary information.(offer handouts).
By analyzing learning styles as a multidimensional mental phenomenon in which can to highlight different levels (or types) of style behavior can be concluded that .Many forms of control (including tests) often give the wrong idea of what the child actually knows and knows how to do – precisely because of a conflict of control with the learner’s inherent teaching style. Analysis of the relationship between student style of teaching and a form of control that is appropriate for that style of teaching allows for to draw an important conclusion: when organizing the assessment procedure of the level of knowledge and skills of the pupil (in a broader sense – his level of preparedness or mental development)
it is necessary to consider his personal cognitive style and give him the opportunity to choose the most appropriate form of control.
The opinion that any single form of control (in the form of a written exam, testing, etc.) is objective precisely because of its uniformity, in terms of style approach
seems not only illusory, but also fraught with serious errors in the assessment of students’ actual capabilities. For this creates advantages for students with a certain mindset and, consequently, disadvantages for students with other cognitive styles, not provided by this “single” form of control.
Here again, we are faced with a serious contradiction. It would seem that the idea of the need to restructure the learning process (the teaching methods used, the forms of presentation of learning information, the specifics of teacher behavior, etc.).
from the point of view of bringing it in line with individual differences in the preferred ways of teaching students is definitely correct.
The essence of the individual approach in school education is that it enables individual differences between children to be taken into account as an important resource for growth.
the effectiveness of their learning activities.
For example, if the learning process is tailored to the individual pace of learning (i.e., each student is given the opportunity to spend as much time as he or she needs to learn the material), up to 95% of children in the class begin to show high and above average levels of ability to learn the material through achievement tests. Whereas in traditional teaching that ignores individual differences in learning achievement, the distribution of children’s learning ability is subordinate to
the effect of the law of normal distribution (i.e., up to 50% of children – much more than 5% as a result of experimental education – have low and average levels of educational and cognitive skills)
ability (quote from: Clarin, 1989; 1997). In other words, our assessment of some children as incapable is, in fact, incorrect.
A teacher’s knowledge of his students’ learning styles optimizes the learning process itself. At each stage of the lesson, you can rely on a student with a specific learning style. For example, activists work well at the stage of involvement in the topic of study, theorists are best suited to explain the material, pragmatists work best at the stage of consolidation, and reflexivists are best suited to be involved at the generalization stage. Before checking the homework in the following lesson, it is good to start the survey with a rule, i.e. to go from the opposite if there are theorists in the class.
Also, in paired work, children with the same or similar styles should not be placed together: reflective and theoretical; active and pragmatic. Why is it so important? … (If we do not know who we are teaching, we will not know how to work, explain in different groups).
However, if we rely on and consolidate only a strictly defined style of learning, the child will eventually look at the world through a narrow “gap” of his or her own
of cognitive style, his mental outlook will be narrowed and possibly deformed.
Second, if the learning process is based on the dominance of any one way of processing information, it will be a precondition for ineffective learning.
of learning, as it drastically narrows the range of ways to study reality. If the learner is only set up for a “deep” approach to learning,
it’s possible to disrupt the selectivity mechanism.
The correct way of asking whether individual styles of learners should be taken into account in the learning process may be as follows
conditions have been created to create a personal cognitive style of each student. At the same time, children with different styles of teaching should be able to choose the line of teaching according to their style features within a single educational space.
Thus, the task of taking into account the individual styles of students in the learning process is transformed into the task of forming a personal cognitive style, which, in its own
This is one aspect of intellectual education of students in the context of modern school education.
Personal cognitive style is formed in the process of human intellectual development, determining the features of his or her behavior in certain specific situations: everyday life,
educational, professional, etc. The higher the level of intellectual maturity of a person, the brighter the personal cognitive style becomes.
