Learning and Teaching Styles Workshop
Felder, R.M., and Silverman, L.K. (1988). Learning and Teaching Styles in Engineering Education. Engr. Education, 78(7), 674-681.
http://www.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching
“Professors confronted by low test grades, unresponsive or hostile classes, poor attendance and dropouts, know that something is wrong.” The authors explain what has happened and how to make it right.”
Richard M. Felder, North Caroline State University
Linda K. Silverman, Institute for the Study of Advanced Development
Students learn in many ways – by seeing and hearing; reflecting and acting; reasoning logically and intuitively; memorizing and visualizing and drawing analogies and building mathematical models; steadily and in fits and starts. Teaching methods also vary. Some instructors lecture, others demonstrate or discuss; some focus on principles and others on applications; some emphasize memory and other understanding. How much a given student learns in a class is governed in part by that student’s native ability and prior preparation but also by the compatibility of his or her learning style and the instructor’s teaching style.
Mismatches exist between common learning styles of engineering students and traditional teaching styles of engineering professors. In consequence, students become bored and inattentive in class, do poorly on tests, get discouraged about the courses, the curriculum, and themselves, and in some cases change other curricula or drop out of school. Professors, confronted by low test grades, unresponsive or hostile classes, poor attendance and dropouts, know something is not working; they may become overly critical of their students (making things even worse) or begin to wonder if they are in the right profession. Most seriously, society loses potentially excellent engineers.
In discussing this situation, we will explore:
- Which aspects of learning styles are particularly significant in engineering education?
- Which learning styles are preferred by most students and which are favored by the teaching styles of most professors?
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What can be done to reach students whose learning styles are not addressed by standard methods of engineering education?
Dimensions of Learning Style
Learning in a structured educational setting may be thought of as a two-step process involving the reception and processing of information. In the reception step, external information (observable through the senses) and internal information (arising introspectively) become available to students, who select the material they will process and ignore the rest. The processing step may involve simple memorization or inductive or deductive reasoning, reflection or action, and introspection or interaction with others. The outcome is that the material is either “learned” in one sense or another or not learned.
A learning-style model classifies students according to where they fit on a number of scales pertaining to the ways they receive and process information. A model intended to be particularly applicable to engineering education is proposed below. Also proposed is a parallel teaching-style model, which classifies instructional methods according to how well they address the proposed learning style components. The learning and teaching style dimensions that define the models are shown in the box.
Most of the learning and teaching style components parallel one another*. A student who favors intuitive over sensory perception, for example, would respond well to an instructor who emphasizes concepts (abstract content) rather than facts (concrete content); a student who favors visual perception would be most comfortable with an instructor who uses charts, pictures, and films.
The proposed learning style dimensions are neither original nor comprehensive. For example, the first dimension – sensing/intuition- is one of four dimensions of a well-known model based on Jung’s theory of psychological types, 1,2 and the fourth dimension – active/reflective processing – is a component of a learning style model developed by Kolb. 3 other dimensions of these two models and dimensions of other models 4,5 also play important roles in determining how a student received and processes information. The hypothesis, however, is that engineering instructors who adapt their teaching style to include both poles of each of the given dimensions should come close to providing and optimal learning environment for most (if not all) students in a class.
There are 32 (2) learning styles in the proposed conceptual framework, (one, for example, is the sensory/auditory/deductive/active/sequential style). Most instructors would be intimated by the prospect of trying to accommodate 32 diverse styles in a given class; fortunately, the task is not as formidable as it might at first appear. The usual methods of engineering education adequately address five categories (intuitive, auditory, deductive, reflective, and sequential), and effective teaching techniques substantially overlap the remaining categories. The addition of a relatively small number of teaching techniques to an instructor’s repertoire should therefore suffice to accommodate the learning styles of every student in the class. Defining these techniques is the principal objective of the remainder of this paper.
Sensing and Intuitive Learners
In his theory of psychological types, Carl Jung introduced sensing and intuition as the two ways in which people tend to perceive the world. Sensing involves observing, gathering date through the senses; intuition involves indirect perception by way of the unconscious – speculation, imagination, bunches. Everyone uses both faculties, but most people tend to favor one over the other.
In the 1940’s Isable Briggs Myers developed he Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), an instrument that measures, among other things, the degree to which an individual prefers sensing or intuition. In the succeeding decades the MBTI has been given to hundreds of thousands of people and the resulting profiles have been correlated with career preferences and aptitudes, management styles, learning styles and various behavioral tendencies. The characteristics of intuitive and sensing types and the different ways in which sensors and intuitors approach learning have been studied.
Sensors like facts, data, and experimentation; intuitors prefer principles and theories. Sensors like solving problems by standard methods and dislike, “surprises”;’ intuitors like innovation and dislike repetition. Sensors are patient with detail but do not like complications; intuitors are bored by detail and welcome complications. Sensors are good at memorizing facts; intuitors are good at grasping new concepts. Sensors are careful but may be slow; intuitors are quick but may be careless.*
An important distinction is that intuitors are more comfortable with symbols that are sensors. Since words are symbols, translating them into what they represent comes naturally to intuitors and is a struggle for sensors. Sensors’ slowness in translating words puts them at a disadvantage in timed tests: since they may have to read questions several times before beginning to answer them, they frequently run out of time.**
Most engineering courses other than laboratories emphasize concepts rather than facts and use primarily lectures and readings (words, symbols) to transmit information, and so favor intuitive learners. Several studies show that most professors are themselves intuitors. On the other hand, the majority of engineering students are sensors, suggesting a serious learning/teaching style mismatch in most engineering courses. The existence of the mismatch is substantiated by Godleski, who found that in both chemical and electrical engineering courses intuitive students almost invariably got higher grades than sensing students. The one exception was a senior course in chemical process design and cost estimation, which the author characterizes as a “solid sensing course” (i.e. one that involved facts and repetitive calculation by well-defined procedures as opposed to many new ideas and abstract concepts.)
While sensors may not perform as well in intuitors in school, both types are capable of becoming fine engineers and are essential to engineering practice. Many engineering tasks require the awareness of surrounding, attentiveness to details, experimental thoroughness, and practicality that are the hallmarks of sensors; many other tasks require the creativity, theoretical ability, and talent at inspired guesswork that characterize intuitors.
To be effective, engineering education should reach both types, rather than directing itself primarily to intuitors. The material presented should be a blend of concrete information (facts, data, observable phenomena) and abstract concepts (principles, theories, mathematical models). The two teaching styles that correspond to the sensing and intuitive learning styles are therefore all concrete and abstract*
Specific teaching methods that effectively address the educational needs of sensors and intuitors are listed in the summary.
