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The importance of understanding individual

learning styles
Styles of thinking and learning are as important as intellectual ability, asserts Robert Sternberg,
IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale Univeristy. And ignoring students’ thinking
styles, he writes, puts teaching and learning in jeopardy.

Learning differences, Sternberg maintains, are not due solely to differences in ability. Learning
styles are directly related to how students achieve in school. Sternberg states that most people are
flexible in their use of different learning styles and can adapt with varying degrees of success to
different learning situations.

Matching learning styles

However, different teaching methods, test formats and assignments are better suited to some
styles than to others. Students generally do better on an assignment when it matches their
preferred style of thinking and learning.

Students tend to gravitate towards learning activities that are compatible with their style of
learning, just as teachers tend to plan activities compatible with their styles. These styles don’t
always match. Sternberg believes that the degree of similarity between the teacher’s and the
student’s thinking styles profoundly affects both the teacher’s perception of the student and the
student’s perception of the teacher.

Sternberg thinks that many educators are understandably confused by the term ‘learning style’
because it has been used to mean many different things. Sternberg has his own theory of learning
style, which he refers to as a thorty of ‘mental self-government’ in which three factors –
function, scope and form – each contributes to the way a student learns.

He writes that just as governments carry out legislative, executive and judicial functions, so does
the mind. The legislative function is concerned with creating, formulating, imagining and
planning. The executive function is concerned with implementing and with doing. The judicial
function is concerned with judging, evaluating and comparing. Sternberg believes that in each
person, one function tends to be dominant.

Sternberg also stresses that any subject can be taught in a way that is compatible with any
learning style. A literature lesson, for example, can involve putting oneself in the place of an
author or character to imagine what will happen (legislative function), or it might involve a short
answer test on factual material (executive function), or an essay test which requires interpretation
of events or evaluation of consequences (judicial function).

Sternberg states that people are more motivated and perform better on activities that match their
learning styles. Therefore, it is important for teachers to be aware of their students’ preferred
styles in order to take advantage of opportunities for student learning. Sternberg reminds us that
when students reject or do poorly on an assignment, we should not necessarily assume that they
are unmotivated or lack ability. Instead, he writes, we must continually bear in mind that if a
particular student seems unmotivated or slow, the student may simply have a very different
thinking style than ours.

Internal or external orientation in learning

Sternberg also cautions us to be aware of a natural bias toward our own personal style in order to
avoid unconsciously penalizing students who do not match us in learning style. Sternberg’s goal
for himself and other educators is to expand the repertoire of teaching techniques to meet the
needs of a population of students with a variety of styles. To do so, we must be more flexible and
we must be able to offer a greater variety of learning activities in our classrooms.

Scope is another aspect of learning style which must be considered when developing appropriate
teaching activities. Scope refers to either an internal or external orientation in a person’s
learning. An ‘internal’ orientation means that the student (or teacher) prefers individual,
independent assignments, whereas an ‘external’ orientation refers to people who prefer group or
collaborative activities. If an internally oriented student is placed in the classroom of a teacher
who is strongly externally oriented or vice versa, the student can feel like a fish out of water.

Forms of self-government
Just as functions of mental self-government resemble, in Sternberg’s theory, the branches of
government, so the forms of government – monarchic, hierarchic, oligarchic or anarchic – are
analogous to forms of mental self-government.

In the monarchic form, a single goal or way of doing things predominates. People who are
oriented in this way ten to focus single-mindedly on one goal or task at a time.

The hierarchic form allows for multiple goals with different priorities. Students with hierarchic
forms of mental self-government are able to prioritize and be systematic in completing class
assignments and solving problems.

The oligarchic form allows for multiple goals also, but here each goal is of equal importance.
Students who function in this manner have difficulty prioritizing. Competing goals can keep
them from completing assignments.

For individuals who have anarchic thinking styles, rules and procedures are a problem. They tend
to perform best when tasks and situations are unstructured and when problems are most readily
solved by insights that are innovative. Teachers with this thinking style often teach in alternative
schools. Students who function anarchically tend to seem intolerant of rules and resist authority.

School styles

Schools, in general, exhibit a preferred style as well. They tend to reward students who exhibit
an executive/hierarchic style. Virtually all standardized tests involve the kind of thinking typical
of the executive style.

Schools tend to reward styles that are effective in the school setting, but not necessarily styles
that are important in the workplace or in an unknown future world. We reward those students
whose styles make them good consumers of the knowledge we teach. We usually do not
encourage students who may have styles that will enable them to become producers of
knowledge in the future.

As teachers, we have our own preferred styles and we unwittingly reward students whose styles
match our own and can sometimes judge negatively those students whose styles differ from ours.
Students whose styles correspond to our own can appear brighter than the rest, even though the
difference is due to style rather than intellectual ability.
Few people rely solely on one style, but some people are more flexible than others in switching
between styles. Teachers who adhere rigidly to one style are not likely to reach the majority of
their students.

On the other hand, a teacher cannot be expected to use a mode of teaching or testing that matches
each student’s preferred style. Nevertheless, educators, according to Steinberg, should be able to
understand a student’s style and be able to use it as a point of entry to motivate or to teach a
concept to a student who is having difficulty in class.

Teachers can also help students to recognize and capitalize on their stylistic strengths, as well as
help them to develop the ability to move more easily between styles.

Steinberg urges us to encourage students’ learning styles that might pay off in the future.
Without understanding learning styles, we risk teaching in ways that are educationally
ineffective or even counterproductive. By providing a variety of activities that match different
learning styles, we will enable a greater number of students to demonstrate their intellectual
ability and to experience success in our classrooms.

“Thinking Styles: Keys to Understanding Student Performance” Phi Delta Kappan January
1990 pp. 366-371.