Language of the Learner

I attended the 9th Annual Management Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change in Organisations in Boston this week and was privileged to meet and speak to some inspiring management thinkers. I also had the opportunity to present at the conference about learning styles and the importance of understanding the language of the learner.

This is by far my favourite topic of all my conference presentations. I am fascinated how triggers geared to our learning preferences can enhance learning and if used incorrectly can disengage learning. Finding the balance between affection and defection is the key.

The notion of learning styles and how these shape our interactions with others and information is something which I think is under-represented in traditional education. Moreover, the considerations of differences in learning styles are largely absent from management communication practice, which was the context of my presentation in Boston.

In the presentation I referenced the famous line from Forrest Gump: “Life is like a box of chocolates… you never know what you’re going to get”. I even opened a box of Hersey Assortments and asked the group to come up and select their favourite type of chocolate. Some selected milk chocolate, others selected dark chocolate and the rest chose either the “peanut” or “crunchy” options. The powerful analogy here is we all have our preferences, just like we do as learners. I argued against the Forrest Gump quote, suggesting that we always know what we want to get, and as educators or managers we need to ensure that we continue to give our participants the choice that works for them.

Learning is reflected in the way we respond to environmental, social, emotional and physical stimuli, to understand new information. Our Learning style can therefore be defined as the way that information is processed. Generallly speaking, learning styles fall into three categories: those who prefer to process information by watching (visual), those who prefer to process information by listening (aural) and the remainder who prefer to process information through physical manipulation (tactile).  I refer to this as the VAT approach. In the absence of knowing the preferences we should always plan for all three. By doing this, you will not only support each learner’s style, but you will be promoting reinforcement by doing it more than once in more than one way. In this way we can value-add training with VAT!

Participants choosing their favourite chocolate