Personality Test
Learning Styles Are How We Learn, by Ken Rohrer
I am a fan of Gregorc's Learning Styles. I see the styles he identifies in everyone- students and teachers alike. Gregorc writes about individual styles of learning and personality. Teachers typically have a tougher time teaching to students on the opposite spectrum of learning styles. I am between an abstract/random and concrete/random. I have the most difficult time teaching to concrete/sequentials. I have to force myself to give directions in a detailed, structured and sequential order. Each learning style has a weakness. Teachers would do well to be aware of not only their own weaknesses, but those of their students. The table below illustrates the weaknesses well.
Gregorc's Learning Styles
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This learner likes:
They learn best when:
What's hard for them?
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This learner likes:
They learn best when:
What's hard for them?
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This learner likes:
They learn best when:
What's hard for them?
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This learner likes:
They learn best when:
What's hard for them?
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The table above is from http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/learning/Gregorc.htm
It is important that we know how to address various learning styles. For example, a concrete/sequential teacher will need to have everything spelled out to them, while an abstract random functions best without any instructions.
You can read more about it here:
http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/learning/Gregorc.htm
http://chat.carleton.ca/~jsauve/gregord.html [Archive]
http://www.indiana.edu/~w505a/learningstyles.html [Archive]
http://www.floatingneutrinos.com/
Test Yourself- What learning style are you?
In addition to learning styles, there are other personality and ability tests online. There are tests to determine your multiple intelligence and brain hemisphere. Here are a few links:
Multiple Intelligences Inventory [Archive]
Brain Types test [right-brain, left-brain - Archive]
If a teacher addresses learning styles in students during their lessons, students will learn better. The same goes for a principal addressing them in their teachers.
Theory Behind the Model
Gregorc's Mind Styles model provides an organized way to consider how the mind works.
Perceptual Quality
Concrete: This quality enables you to register information directly through your five senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. When you are using your concrete ability, you are dealing with the obvious, the "here and now." You are not looking for hidden meanings, or making relationships between ideas or concepts. "It is what it is."
Abstract: This quality allows you to visualize, to conceive ideas, to understand or believe that which you cannot actually see. When you are using your abstract quality, you are using your intuition, your imagination, and you are looking beyond "what is" to the more subtle implications. "It is not always what it seems."
Although all people have both concrete and abstract perceptual abilities to some extent, each person is usually comfortable using one more than the other. The person whose natural strength in the concrete, for example, may communicate in a direct, literal, no-nonsense manner. The person whose natural strength is the abstract may use more subtle ways to get a point across.
Ordering Ability
Sequential: Allows your mind to organize information in a linear, step-by-step manner. When using your sequential ability, you are following a logical train of thought, a traditional approach to dealing with information. You may also prefer to have a plan and to follow it, rather than relying on impulse.
Random: Lets your mind organize information by chunks, and in no particular order. When you are using your random ability, you may often be able to skip steps in a procedure and still produce the desired result. You may even start in the middle, or at the end, and work backwards. You may also prefer your life to be more impulsive, or spur of the moment, than planned.
Both ordering abilities are present in each person, but usually a pattern emerges for using one over the other more comfortably. There are four combinations of the strongest perceptual and ordering ability in each individual:
1. Concrete Sequential (CS)
2. Abstract Random (AR)
3. Abstract Sequential (AS)
4. Concrete Random (CR)
No one is a "pure" style. Each of us have a unique combination of natural strengths and abilities
