Learning Styles: Understanding & Accommodating Learning Styles for Effective Instruction

People learn in different ways. Learning styles classify how people approach new information and how they then learn that information. Because educational researchers and theorists have been designing learning models for decades, there are many theories used to categorize learning styles. In this article, we are going to narrow it down to a few that we will partner with teaching methods so that you can immediately and easily alter your teaching to better reach all of your students. Researchers have found that students learn better and more quickly if the teaching methods match their learning styles. So, what contributes to a person’s learning style? How many learning styles are there? How can you teach to all learning styles? Is it possible to reach everyone? How can you fairly assess student learning? Short of testing every student that walks into your classroom, how can you know which learning style categories your students fall into?