2010
“Know Your Learner”
Certificate in Education Year 1 (Part-Time)
Assignment Two: Case Study: ‘Know Your Learner’
Knowing your learners means being able to recognize, acknowledge, and teach according to the educational and psychological needs of each student.
Good Teachers understand how students differ in their approaches to learning. They create instructional opportunities and use teaching methods that match the natural and diverse ways that people learn. These, effective teachers, take time to know their learners because this builds trust, rapport, and connection with learning.
The first step in getting to know learners is to conduct initial assessments. These are carried out to ensure that students are on the right course and that they get the right support. Some key information to extract from an initial assessment might be:
* What is / are the learner’s previous qualification(s) or experience. With particular attention paid to that which relates to the course you are teaching.
* What are your learners going to achieve by the end of the course.
The Homework on Types Of Students
Types of Students (1) There are different types of students classification that correspond to the various aspects of educational process. The commonly accepted classification of students makes it easier for the educators to address their needs and helps to increase the effectiveness of academic process. It also needs to be said that the system of students classification cannot be viewed as the ...
* What additional support needs do they have (if any) and how can you meet them?
* What skills do they require, including communication, literacy, numeracy and language?
* What are the awarding body’s expectations? (if applicable)
* Are there specific legal requirements? (E.g. child protection screening?)
* Equality and diversity issues
* What is the funding source? I.e. if an employer is funding the course, what are their expectations, of you, as a teacher and of the learner?
* Learners’ learning styles and personal characteristics – if you assess these, how do you intend to use the information.
There are lots of different ways of carrying out initial assessment. These can include Key Skills Analysis, Psychometric Testing, screening tests, application forms, one-to-one or group interviews and Learning Styles analyses.
I conduct initial assessment on the first evening of teaching my British Sign Language Taster Courses, having not had any opportunity to do this earlier. I reflect this is not the best way of approaching initial assessment but trust that the main findings have already been covered when my students enrol and before they meet me.
When undertaking customer interviews in my other role as a Disability Employment Adviser for Jobcentreplus, I use a computerised Customer Assessment Tool (CAT).
This gives me the opportunity to discuss, in some detail, what the needs of my customer are, in terms of support, barriers to employment, general attitude etc… I find this very useful and the scores can be amended whenever we agree that improvements have been made in a particular area.
One outcome from conducting effective Initial Assessment is discovering a student’s learning style. There are many ways of discovering learning styles and personality types.
I researched an interesting way of discovering a person’s temperament type by using the Kiersey Temperament Sorter. Keirsey’s Temperament Theory was first written about in the book, Please Understand Me, (Kiersey 1978)
According to Keirsey‘s Temperament Theory, there are four basic temperament groups which describe human behaviour – Artisans, Guardians, Rationals and Idealists.
Of course, there are many tools similar to this but I did complete the questionnaire and found the description of myself in the “idealist” category, surprisingly accurate.
The Term Paper on Enabling Learning and Assessment
1. The purposes of assessment Assessment is the process of evaluating an individual’s learning. It involves generating and collecting evidence of a learner’s attainment of knowledge and skills and judging that evidence against defined standards. Tummons suggested that: ‘With assessment we can: * Find out if learning has taken place; * Diagnose learners needs; * Provide public acknowledgment and ...
A well known learning styles analysis tool was designed by David Kolb and there have been other theories developed since, which use his model as a basis for their own methods. An example of this would be the Honey and Mumford Learning Styles Questionnaire.
Peter Honey and Alan Mumford developed their learning styles system as a variation on Kolb’s model while working on a project for the Chloride Corporation in the 1970’s. Honey and Mumford say the following:
“Our description of the stages in the learning cycle originated from the work of David Kolb. Kolb uses different words to describe the stages of the learning cycle and four learning styles…”
And, “…The similarities between his model and ours are greater than the differences…” (Honey & Mumford)
So, literature does indicate that the concept of learning styles is widely accepted, however, there is disagreement on how to best measure learning styles.
While the learning profession has long recognised the need for instructional activities that relate to students different learning styles, there is some question as to just how meaningful these learning “preferences” are to the learning environment. Research tends to agree that it is more important to match the presentation with the nature of the subject, such as providing correct learning methods, strategies, and materials; than matching individual preferences. (Coffield, 2004).
Conclusions
The important thing to remember when undertaking Initial Assessment is to know what you want to do with the information obtained. In my opinion, there is little point in gathering key information from your learners in order to “tick a box” and then not use your findings in a way which is beneficial to all concerned. E.g. Is there a purpose to finding out whether someone has a visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learning style, unless you plan to use this information to specifically plan lessons around it?
I feel that information gleaned from LSA’s can be useful as a tool but not to be taken so literally that you risk dividing your class into V’s, A’s and K,s. As long as there is a variety of stimulation for your learners, and there is practical evidence that they are actually learning, then surely you are being effective in your role as an educator (?)
The Essay on Auditory Learning Style
Individual differences establish the well-acknowledged concept of the variety of learning styles exhibited by learners. This means that learners are likely to learn differently according to their fortes and preferences. The ability to learn by using one’s auditory capabilities is one learning styles. Students who are more likely to learn through auditory learning styles focus on the things that ...
Aside from the results of LSA’s the other, arguably more useful information, found from conducting Initial assessment, should form a SMART Individual Learning Plan for each student.
