Running Head: LEARNING STYLES INVENTORY

Learning Styles Inventory Monica Huttelmayer Ivy Tech Community College

LEARNING STYLES INVENTORY Janice Koch states in her book So You Want to Be a Teacher that teachers have an

important mission: finding out how to access all the types of intelligences so that all students can learn to their maximum potential (Koch, 2009, p. 149). Many leading psychologist believe that each learner has an intelligence profile, which is an individuals unique combination of relative strengths and weaknesses among all the different intelligences (Koch, 2009, p. 149). The basic ideology of Kochs statement is that it is the responsibility of the teacher to make sure his or her students learn as much as possible. One of the things that teachers have to look at is the learning styles of their students because each student learns differently. There are five different types of learning styles: multimodal, visual, aural, read-write, and kinesthetic. A teacher needs to be able to teach all five of these styles during his or her classes to make sure all the students are learning to their maximum potential. Personally, my learning style is multimodal, which means that I can learn by using more than one learning style effectively depending on the situation; in this way I am extremely lucky. In my case, I can learn from three different learning styles equally effectively: Kinesthetic, Read/Write and Visual. I am weakest in the Aural Learning Style, but my score was still pretty high in that area. Another thing that teachers have to look at is the intelligence profiles of their students. There are 11 types of intelligence profiles: linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, naturalistic intelligence, existential intelligence, spiritual intelligence and moral intelligence. I have a high linguistic intelligence, but a poor spatial intelligence, which means I am goo at manipulating words, but I dont do so well at recognizing relationships in

LEARNING STYLES INVENTORY physical space and manipulating them. A real world example of this is that I am really good at writing ten page essays in school, but I have a horrible sense of direction when driving. Teachers are responsible for educating the students to the best of their abilities, so teaching using different learning styles is very important. They need to know the five different learning styles and the eleven types of intelligence profiles so that they can learn to effectively apply them in their lesson plans to give the students a higher chance at comprehending the lessons being taught. Every student is important and by learning the differences in these styles shows that the teacher cares enough to try and meet every students individual needs. As a teacher in training, this is a goal that I hold highly for myself, because I want to be the kind of teacher that encourages her students to learn by making learning as fun and easy as possible.