The Dynamics of the Human Mind

Woo.

My final dissertation for a class teaching me *how to learn* is done.

Good Lord...I -HATED- this class.

It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know but hey, I guess I survived it and it made me stronger.

I'll be honest when I say that this is not my finest work...as a matter of fact I had a dilly of a time trying to find actual psychological missives and studies which illustrated the continuum of progression and dynamic growth of the individual learning style...something I had to pretty much fudge my way through.

Why, oh why, Barbara Lyn, did you not just pick an easier topic like what different learning styles are? Or, how getting up and moving around affects your ability to learn?

But, NOOOOOOOOooooo. You had to pick an area of study that is not full well defined nor adequately exploooooorrrrreeeeddddd.....

Hee hee. I *never* settle for the path of least resistance.

How do you like THEM apples, lightning?!



O.o

I digress.

So without further adieu, in honor of my dear friend S. Lyon Woolverton, here it is:

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The Dynamics of Learning

Alfred Edward Perlman, a reporter for The New York Times, was once quoted saying: “After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.”

But there are some forms of change which come not by decision; but rather, necessity, determined by environmental factors which ultimately shape our way of thinking and living. From the earliest stages in our youth we tend to gravitate toward a certain learning type, be it auditory, kinesthetic, visual, etc., but as we grow and mature these learning types become a dynamic all their own.

Hence, the dynamic learner.

As children we are nurtured by the adults in our lives – teachers, parents, relatives. Children are expected to reach certain educational milestones within certain amounts of time, such as learning to walk by a certain age. The way an adult interacts with a child often reveals the first indicators of what type of learner that child is. According the Singer (2009), infants bear a predisposition to learn by visual, auditory and kinesthetic stimuli, perhaps being a forebear to the umbrella learning styles and their subsets of individualistic learning characteristics.

According to Conner (2004), there are several learning styles, the three primary types being visual, kinesthetic and auditory learners. These can be broken down into sub-set learning styles for varying types of intelligences, such as linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, inter/intrapersonal and naturalist intelligences as specified by Armstrong (1998, pg. 67) The ability to recognize both strengths and weaknesses in these learning areas can lend itself to a parent or teacher’s understanding of a child’s learning dynamic, thusly allowing the adult to maximize the effectiveness in teaching the child by focusing on that learning type.

Yet children are pliable and ever changing. A person usually does not set an actual career or educational goal until much later in life, preferring in their youth to think of themselves as ballerinas, doctors, firefighters or astronauts before they find themselves as electricians, sales representatives or even the CEO’s of major companies. As goals in life change over time they influence the way we learn. For example, a child who wants to be a firefighter might rely on bodily/kinesthetic learning styles in their youth, but once they grow older and find themselves working in a department store or some such, may find that they become a visual or an auditory learner.

According to Sylwester, (1995, pg. 18), “Our brains develop in their own way which lends credence to the idea of multiple intelligences and specializations.” With age and development comes responsibility, ultimately impacting how we live our lives. Physical growth and the added responsibilities of building one’s self in the world, so far as to establish there own household, can shape an individual’s learning dynamic. Whereas we once had the time to engage in flight of fancy, dreaming of lofty intentions and pursuing more extravagant paths, the reality of a world fraught with poor economic times, high tuitions for college and other road blocks may force a person to change their learning style. For example, a person who may have been an auditory learner with dreams of becoming a rock star might find themselves working a regular nine to five, sitting through PowerPoint presentations and adapting to become a visual learner simply for the sake of the type of learning being executed. It is this on-the-spot adaptability which lends itself to creating personages with more than one learning style.

The environmental impact of public schooling might best illustrate this point: according to Guild & Garger (1998, pg. 14), “Most schools illustrate the sameness of curriculum content, instructional methods, and evaluation practices. We see students using the same textbooks and the same materials for learning.” Children who might be bodily/kinesthetic learners in their extreme youth may be shaped and molded over the discourse of a dozen years in school and ultimately find their learning styles have changed to something more confined to a desk, like visual or auditory. The same might be said in reverse theoretically, especially if a child engaged actively in sports activities. A child’s intellectual growth is especially impacted by the child’s interests and the mutually exclusive educational environment the child is subject to.

These multiple learning styles also follow suit of the individual talents of a person. There are varying degrees of learning types – a bodily/kinesthetic learner may not necessarily go on to play pro-football, and a visual or auditory learner may not necessarily work a nine-to-five job or become a musician. Changeable degrees in interests can also have an impact on the dynamics of learning – where we might have a deeply-seeded interest in one topic, we may confront issues that we would rather avoid and shift our learning type to accommodate both of those situations. For example, a person might delight in making sculptures and rely heavily on bodily/kinesthetic learning styles in pursuit of that goal, whereas they lack any interest in playing baseball, preferring to watch the game than actually participating. In that case, they would rely on a visual context to understand the game, whereas one might assume that a sport of that variety requires a bodily/kinesthetic learner.

There have been varying professional opinions in regard to how we must adapt our teaching methods to cater to the individualistic style of each person. “Most believe that schools and teachers must make major adaptations. Some believe that learners must adapt their ways of learning to meet the requirements for success in school, and a few advocate a little bit of each.” (Guild & Garger, 1998, pg. 153) Yet in a world where the changes in learning environments and responsibility are so fast paced that the human mind must take account and adapt on an increasingly immediate level, it would be impossible to say that just one factor needs to change in order to capitalize on individualistic learning styles. In order to fully realize our potential, it is best to recognize the fact that people, and learning, are dynamic in their interconnectivity – and change is about the only thing we can count on.

(P.S. - I just LOVE severe weather. It is SUCH a damn turn-on! I get charged up just thinking about it...it's that incredible thunder-struck feeling!)

ZAP!