Research on learning has discovered a number of avenues aimed at ways to help increase learning. One of the discoveries showed that among us we have different learning styles, and that a particular method or strategy might be more effective for one style than another. Increasingly, as more and more on how the brain works comes to light, education research has drawn attention to how individuals learn, what approach works best for whom, and what kinds of settings contribute to learning productivity.
Dr. Howard Gardner, Harvard University professor of education, developed the theory of multiple intelligences that looks at eight ways that people are "smart." Drawing from this work, Dr. Thomas Armstrong, a keynoter at Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's Education Now and in the Future Conference, spoke about eight pathways to facilitate effectively reaching and teaching all students. The eight kinds of intelligences are:
As teachers, parents, and students become aware of these different ways that we can interest and engage students and ourselves as learners, these pathways can be put to use effectively. Depending on how your children, or you, are disposed, see how you might use different kinds of smarts to help make learning connections.
Dr. Armstrong's Web site (www.thomasarmstrong.com) offers an example of how this can work, using teaching or learning about the law of supply and demand in economics:
...(Y)ou might read about it (linguistic), study mathematical formulas that express it (logical-mathematical); examine a graphic chart that illustrates the principle (spatial), observe the law in the natural world (naturalist) or in the human world of commerce (interpersonal); examine the law in terms of your own body [e.g. when you supply your body with lots of food, the hunger demand goes down; when there's very little supply, your stomach's demand for food goes way up and you get hungry] (bodily-kinesthetic and intrapersonal); and/or write a song (or find an existing song) that demonstrates the law...
Teachers and parents are brainstorming a variety of ways to make learning connections, and kids are great at coming up with ideas. For starters, how about singing a mathematical formula; making a numbers game of historical dates, staging a literature reading with family members acting out the punctuation, drawing a huge picture of...
This column by Karen Lytle Blaha is provided as a public service by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit institution working with schools and communities in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.
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