Today I’m joining in with The Daily Post from WordPress.
You can see other posts written on today’s topic here.
What’s your learning style? Do you prefer learning in a group and in an interactive setting? Or one-on-one? Do you retain information best through lectures, or visuals, or simply by reading books?
When Chris was doing his youth work degree, he studied a lot about learning styles. He would then come home and try to analyse me. One of the styles he looked at involved Concrete, Abstract, Random and Sequential learning styles. He decided he was a concrete learner while he thought I was an Abstract learner. We came to the conclusion that although I’m probably an abstract random learner rather than a Concrete Sequential learner. I love lists so try to do things sequentially. For example, you load the dishwasher first. Then you’re only hand washing the things that can’t go in the dishwasher.
I think I’m a doer when it comes to learning things. If there was a problem with the car and gave me a Haynes manual, I would try to fix the car. But I would want to be hands on rather than reading about it. When it comes to knitting and crochet, I want to give it a go at the same time as learning how to do it. I think it sticks better that way. I can read something and think I can do it in theory but the practice can be a whole other thing. I can trampoline, I know I can bounce up and down and do some routines but I can’t do a back somersault – although I do know the theory of “How To Do a Back Somersault”. I think I prefer learning in a group setting because you can share information. I’ve been to craft workshops in the past and they have worked that the Tutor has shown you at the front what the task is then as you get on with it they walk around the room and help you on a one to one basis.
I love reading books, both fiction and non-fiction. I love baking cakes and recipes from books – I tend to get a bit pedantic about the recipe needing specific ingredients whereas Chris who tends to be more Concrete just passes me an alternative and tells me to get on with it!
When it comes to preaches at church I often prefer ones with PowerPoints because I keep track of where we are up to. I also like preaches that have stories of real world applications or stories that are relevant to the message being given. One of the guys who speaks at church nearly always using a clip from a film or TV show in his preach. He’s used Star Wars and Lord of The Rings (and they are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head!). We did a series years ago in Kids Work that used Star Wars clips in it. There was the idea that like Anakin had to pick between the Dark Side and being a Jedi we have to choose between following Jesus and not.
