Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Learning Style Perspectives: Impact in the Classroom Lynne Celli Sarasin. Atwood: Madison, WI, 1998. vii + 102 pp. ISBN 1-891859-22-6. Paper, $21.95.
I became personally aware of the importance of learning styles about ten years ago when I attended a one-week short course on a nonscientific topic. Although I passed the course, it was one of the worst learning experiences in my life. In retrospect, I have realized that the content of the course was not difficult and that the course was both well planned and reasonably well taught. The problem was that the way the course was taught was orthogonal to my learning style. The subject was divided into discrete modules that developed the individual “bricks” that when put together at the end made a neat and useful final structure, but we were not shown how the pieces fit together until almost the end of the course. As a holistic and metaphorical learner I needed to see how the individual pieces fit into the overall concept right from the beginning. Without a context, each of the pieces seemed like a random bit of information that needed to be memorized, and I am not good at memorizing. As a result, the course was an excruciating experience for me. Since then I have been trying to learn as much as possible about learning styles. What I have learned has helped me understand why certain parts of my own education were very difficult and why some were so delightful. The learning experiences that matched my preferred learning style were usually the best. Those that didn’t, such as the course described above, were among the worst. I have also begun to understand some of my own weaknesses as a teacher. We all tend to teach to our own learning style. I have to consciously design my courses to address learning styles that are significantly different from my own. Good practical information about learning styles, however, is rather hard to find so I was pleased to discover this little book by Lynne Celli Sarasin.
The essential idea of learning styles is that people have different preferred ways of obtaining and processing information. There are a number of ways of classifying these differences and Chapter 2 of this volume provides a concise summary and comparison of the different theories. The author prefers to divide learners into three types, auditory, visual, and tactile, but throughout the book she is careful to point out how her classification scheme relates to other wellknown formulations. The core of the book comprises three chapters that describe the three learning styles in detail and give practical suggestions on teaching strategies to better accommodate each type of learner. I found these chapters to be both interesting and useful. Although the author does not specifically discuss the teaching of chemistry, many of the strategies she suggests can be used in chemistry courses. In fact, chemical educators have some real advantages in reaching tactile learners who needs hand-on experiences as entry points into a subject. Many of our courses have laboratories, perhaps the ultimate tactile educational experience. Molecular models are also a powerful tactile learning tool. Teaching to a broad variety of learning styles is challenging, but essential if we are to make chemistry accessible to all the students who need to learn it. This book is an excellent introduction to the subject. It is concise, well written, and relatively free of jargon. More important, it provides the teacher with practical advice on how to recognize different learning styles and how to deal with them in the classroom. I am confident that the information in this book will make me a better teacher. I can’t imagine a better recommendation. Jeffrey Kovac Department of Chemistry University of Tennessee, Knoxville Knoxville, TN 37996
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 76 No. 12 December 1999 • Journal of Chemical Education
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