Deepening your self-understanding can be valuable in discovering your Learning Preferences and helping you choose the best approach to learning new material.
We all have different Learning Preferences, and, if we understand them, they can help us find the optimal way to absorb, retain and recall whatever content we need to learn. This helps us on the quest to becoming lifelong learners – essential in our modern world.
At times, you may encounter teaching styles or methods that don’t match your Learning Preferences. It’s then that you need to take practical steps to maximise your learning. Understanding your Learning Preferences can help with this.
Choose either the Standard Report or the Advanced Report that includes Personal Mastery and Resilience.
Complete the online questionnaire and then purchase your personalised LearnSmartly feedback report. Download it, then save it and/or print it.
Take time to read through your LearnSmartly feedback report and try out the practical suggestions it includes.
Complete the online questionnaire.
Purchase your personalised LearnSmartly feedback report which covers your likely Learning Style and Teaching Style.
Take time to read through your LearnSmartly feedback report and try out the practical suggestions it includes.
Allows the educator to become more self-aware and proactive in leveraging the best way to teach
Given the high level of burnout experienced by educators globally, building your personal mastery and resilience helps improve your overall emotional health
By delivering a curriculum in a way that engages all four quadrants of the brain, educators are able to exponentially improve learner results and prevent dropout
Improves personal mastery and resilience in the context of a learning environment
Allows one to become a self-aware, self-directed, proactive learner leveraging the best way to learn
Improves throughput - more people successfully complete the learning
Reduces attrition, with fewer people abandoning the learning journey
Increases retention and application of learning as well as improved workplace impact / readiness
Level of Extraversion / Introversion
Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, Intuiting preferences (based on Carl Jung and modern Neuroscience)
Enneagram behavioural style
The practical implication of these aspects for optimising your learning capability.
Strengths and areas for possible further development.
The primary aim of the Learnsmartly assessment and feedback reports is to help learners and educators optimise their learning and teaching styles for significantly improved results.
Learners Discover how to approach learning in ways that align with your optimal learning style.
Educators Discover how to use a ‘multi-brain quadrant’ teaching style that engages learners’ whole brain.
Explore the 4MAT system or UDL scheme in designing learning experiences, or a combination of these two.
These methods stretch learners to become adept at accessing more of the brain during the learning process and enhance their learning capability.
Starting with Connect, each stage follows sequentially in a clockwise direction. By applying these steps, learners are exposed to experiences and tasks that engage all four quadrants of their brain, which ensures that even those with a strong single quadrant preference benefit. Engaging all the quadrants has the further benefit of stretching the learners to operate in modes that are initially sub-optimal but, with practice, increases their versatility because of neuroplastic changes in their brain connections.
Once again, this is not limited to the learners but applies equally to educators who may find themselves challenged by having to use techniques associated with their least used or even avoided quadrant Yet, even if educators do not have the naturally versatile style required to seamlessly implement four-quadrant teaching, the skills required can be learned and their style adapted.
The Universal Design for Learning framework was developed in the early 1990s by the Harvard based organisation, CAST, and based on neuroscientific research, cognitive psychology and the learning sciences. Neuroscience research indicates that there are three key networks of the brain which require stimulation for us to learn effectively and that these networks are stimulated in different ways in different people.
CAST took this research and mapped it to supporting research in the learning sciences to develop three key principles calling on educators to provide the following (Ryder, 2019)
• Multiple Means of Engagement – The ‘Why’ of Learning relating to the Affective Networks of the brain
• Multiple Means of Representation – The ‘What’ of Learning relating to the Recognition Networks of the brain
• Multiple Means of Action and Expression – The ‘How’ of Learning relating to the Strategic Networks of the brain
It has gained considerable international recognition and provides a lesson planning technique for educators.
In many respects it seems very similar to 4MAT. However, the underlying neurology it uses is broader and less functionally specific. To its advantage, it has a strong alignment with inclusive pedagogy and strives to make learning more widely available (Shi, 2018).
The extended Jungian four-functional theory defines thinking style, learning style and teaching style adequately, even suggesting teaching methods. And it’s all verified by research
In the same way that learners have preferred styles, educators have preferred ways of teaching and these, too, may be traced back to the four thinking styles. Grasha (1994) describes these.
Grasha’s theory raises a number of speculations. Educator-centred approaches are located in the left hemisphere and are best suited to factual subject matter that relies on logic, analysis and established procedures. The learner-centred approaches, conversely, are right-hemisphere based and suit subject matter that requires intuition, imagination and perception of subtle non-verbal cues.
This suggests that the specific subject matter plays a part in determining the optimal teaching style. This could also suggest that educators with a specific style preferentially elect to teach certain types of subjects.
Grasha’s teaching styles are described in terms that relate to Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership model (Hersey & Blanchard, 1969). Elements of Telling, Selling, Participating and Delegating are clearly present. It may suggest that this is actually a Situational Teaching Style model with multiple parameters combining to determine the optimal teaching style in any situation.
Lastly, it raises the issue of a teacher as a leader, which is consistent with the Latin root that becomes education in English: Educere, meaning to lead out. This suggests that the ability to inspire and lead is an indispensable quality in a successful educator.
THINKING: Lecturer or Authoritative Style
The authoritative teaching style follows the traditional teacher-centred approach, often characterised by lecture sessions or one-way presentations. In this approach (also called the “chalk and talk” style), students are expected to pay attention, absorb the information, take notes and ask questions.
SENSING: Demonstrator or Coach Style
Often used in mathematics, science and music, the demonstrator style involves more “showing” rather than “telling” with teachers more likely to support the information with examples or experiments, demonstrations or multimedia presentations.
FEELING: Delegator or Group Style
Well-suited for curriculums that include or emphasise group activities, the delegator style of teaching shifts much of the responsibility for learning onto the students, who are encouraged to work together in projects connected to the lesson themes (think science labs, debates, etc.). In this style, the teacher is an active observer working to guide students in the right direction.
INTUITION: Facilitator or Activity Style
The facilitator/teacher is focussed on promoting self-learning and helping students develop critical learning and thinking skills. A student-centred approach, it involves creating learning plans and classes that require students to explore and discover the course content in creative and original ways.
Grasha’s styles align closely to the four-quadrant model, seamlessly adding the third level to this conceptual model. Bear in mind that it is unlikely that an educator would show enhanced activity in only one of the quadrants and is more likely to use a mixture of styles in teaching. To accommodate this, he added a fifth style.
VERSATILE: Hybrid or Blended Style
The hybrid approach may integrate elements of the styles discussed above, often blending the teacher’s personality and interests with those of the students. While this method is considered inclusive, enabling teachers to tailor their styles to student needs within the subject matter, some educators believe it risks diluting the learning process by placing less emphasis on in-depth study than when following a single, focused approach.
In dismissing these misgivings, Grasha asserts that teachers often use a blend of several teaching styles. Effective teachers are flexible and are able to change their teaching style to suit the circumstances and the students’ learning requirements (Grasha, 1994).
Yet, subsequent research suggests that faculty members in higher education initially adopt a teaching style that reflects either their own learning style or an effective teaching method they experienced during their own education (Hawk & Shah, 2007).This approach results in faculty members who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with incorporating a variety of learning style models into their curricula. This may need to be addressed during educator training or become an established policy in institutions.
Which gives insight into your preferred behavioural patterns.
The Enneagram describes nine patterns of behaviour that are recognised in people from diverse cultures throughout the world, and appear to be fundamental characteristics of human beings. Out of habit, past experience, and even inherited aspects, individuals tend to use one of these patterns far more frequently than the other eight. Each of the nine encapsulates certain values, likes, dislikes and other preferences linked to personality, and because of this they are each likely to present a preferred way of learning.
Personal Mastery contributes towards emotional maturity and resilience. People with high Personal Mastery are likely to cope with life in a mature way and overcome difficulties they encounter with relative ease. People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode. They never ‘arrive’. It is a process. It is a lifelong discipline. People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And they are deeply self- confident.
The six Personal Mastery factors on which we focus our attention combine to provide an overall view indicating the degree to which an individual has progressed on this personal journey.
Personality model developed by Carl Gustav Jung
Our four-letter acronym personality model is based on the typology model developed by Carl Gustav Jung. This model essentially describes your natural behavioural preferences.
Theory suggests that your core type doesn’t change. However, studies in the neurosciences show that your behaviour can, in fact, change and adapt over time as a result of intentional practice and/or because of the requirements of the environment in which you find yourself.
Which has a relationship to levels of stress
Resilience is a fundamental temperamental factor that relates to a cluster of attributes including emotional stability and self-efficacy, both of which contribute to a ‘can do’ attitude. This allows individuals to cope with adversity because they feel adequate and believe that they can cope despite the magnitude of the issues that they face. On the other end of the dimension, we have an individual who finds it difficult to deal with the slightest adversity and who becomes immobilised in stressful situations. This converse ‘can’t do’ attitude rests equally on the lack of self-efficacy.
Jungian theory suggests that any individual’s personality may be described by an overall orientation and the degree to
which they use one or more of Jung’s four cognitive functions. Neuroscientific research produced the fMRI scan, which allows the non-invasive observation of the working human brain. Herrmann and others soon used this methodology to put Jung’s theory to the test and were able to associate areas of the brain with the four functions. Theory suggests that your core type doesn’t change. However, studies in the neurosciences show that your behaviour can, in fact, change and adapt over time as a result of intentional practice and/or because of the requirements of the environment in which you find yourself.
The following dimensions are linked to Your Learning:
This report can be used by Learners and can be integrated into learning processes
This report can be used by all Educators who design, lead and/or deliver learning interventions in any context:
The following dimensions are linked to Your Learning Preferences and Behaviours:
This report can be used by Learners in tertiary learning or executive education, management development skills training and learning programmes
A correlation coefficient is a numerical measure of a correlation, meaning a statistical relationship between variable scales.
Cronbach’s alpha is the common name used for tau-equivalent reliability which estimates the reliability of a psychometric test.
As educators, we are privileged to work with others in the building and extend their cognitive development. We are uniquely positioned to guide and assist our students in making meaning of their experiences, in other words, to help them learn.
Future Fit Leaders with a Growth Mindset are those who embrace challenges and persevere when faced with adversity. They are leaders who believe they can do anything and are willing to take on complex tasks and learn through effort.
As we hurtle towards the new work of work, learning new skills is and will continue to be critical. Lifelong learning and continuous learning are often terms used interchangeably. They can sometimes have slightly different meanings depending on the context.
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