Three Perspectives Of Learning Styles - school administration

School Administrator, Jan, 1994

Editor's Note: The School Administrator invited administrators in three school districts to write about their experiences using a learning styles approach with teachers and students. Their accounts describe three different learning styles programs widely used in elementary and secondary school classrooms. These are the programs developed by Rita and Kenneth Dunn, Marie Carbo, and Anthony Gregorc.

Recreating an Environment for Learning

ROLAND H. ANDREWS

When first arrived at Bright-wood Elementary School in Greensboro in October 1981, I questioned my sanity for wanting to be a principal. The faculty was divided, parents were unhappy, and children were not achieving and constantly fighting.

I quickly saw I had a tiger by the tail. Things had to change if I was going to be a successful principal. But what could be done to change the negative conditions that were preventing student learning?

Most of my time was spent disciplining children and dealing with angry parents. Many children hated school and let us know just how they felt. We found and tried many strategies to help improve the school climate, but nothing seemed to make a difference. Staff frustration was increasing and I felt inadequate.

In 1984, quite by accident, I was introduced at a summer conference for North Carolina principals to the Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles Model. I subsequently shared what I had learned about learning styles with my staff. The teachers expressed an interest in learning more, so we collected and studied materials on the Dunn and Dunn Model. As teachers experimented with the 22 elements in the model, we began to see a change in some students.

I attended the New York Learning Styles Network Institute, sponsored by St. John's University, in 1986 and returned to share what I had learned with teachers and our PTA officers. The PTA made a commitment to send five teachers to the New York institute the next summer.

When we gave the teachers at Brightwood the option of whether to work with learning styles, all 16 teachers decided to join in the effort. We continued to work on classroom design, which allows children to work with their preferred environmental style. During spring of the 1986-87 school year we inventoried all students using the Dunn-Dunn and Price Learning Styles Inventory.

Five teachers and I attended the 1987 New York Learning Styles Network Institute. When we returned, the participants formed a learning styles committee. The committee facilitated the learning styles effort by working with other teachers and developed a plan for implementing the Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles Model.

We decided to proceed slowly to evaluate the effectiveness of our efforts. During the next school year we used small group techniques, continued with room design, and developed tactual materials. Since our students were weakest in mathematics, we worked in cooperative groups to develop hands-on math materials for each grade level.

We discovered we had not adequately prepared our students for the first inventory, so we reinventoried all students after they discovered more about learning styles and the inventory. We used Elephant Styles, a booklet written for kindergarten through second grade, and Mission from No Style: Wonder and Joy Meet the Space Children, for third through fifth grade, to teach students about style.

Our school counselor helped by using learning styles in classroom counseling lessons. After proper preparation, we got much better results from our inventories. Learning Styles Homework Prescriptions, developed by Rita Dunn to provide printouts of individualized learning styles programs, was used to share students' learning styles with their parents. We set up evening meetings to explain the meaning of learning styles to parents.

Our learning styles program continued to grow and produce positive results. The year before we started learning styles I had to discipline 144 students. In 1991-92, my last year as Brightwood's principal, only eight students were sent to the office.

Another Beginning

In July 1992, I was transferred to Rankin Elementary School to implement a learning styles program similar to the one I had developed at Brightwood. Rankin is a larger school with problems similar to Brightwood's a decade earlier.

Learning styles implementation at Rankin was different in three ways. Since I was transferred to implement learning styles and knew the value to children, choice among staff members was not an option.

The second major difference was that I had learned the value of time of day for children and staff members, so we scheduled staff development sessions at staff members' best time of day. We had six different time groups for staff members to receive learning styles information at their best time.

The third difference was that we wrote proposals for external funds to help accelerate the staff development program. As a result, we were able to provide more than half the staff with at least five days of training with Rita Dunn last summer. It took us four years to accomplish this at Brightwood.