Principles of adult learning

Learning in recent years is understood to be an active, not a passive, process. Thus, many teachers have implemented learning contracts so as to provide a learning process as opposed to a directed learning content. In the specific context of learning styles, learning contracts may be especially beneficial to the overall acquisition of knowledge since the student whom is knowledgeable about his or her learning styles can create an educational plan or a learning contract which reflects or emphasizes his or her particular learning style (Codde, PhD, 2006). By doing this, the student may see a greater amount of success, may acquire a greater amount and quality of knowledge, and may intrinsically find motivation for fostering further learning.

(2) as an adult educator, I would use knowledge of learning styles in my particular classroom to help with curriculum development as well as classroom delivery of instruction, creation of assignments, and overall assessment. If I understand that the vast majority of my class learns through kinetic means, then I should incorporate opportunities to move during the learning. If I understand which learners are visual, then I can make sure that my lessons not only include a verbal component, but that there is a visual component as well. Assignments can be tailored so as to reflect the qualities that the students possess and the ones in which they should learn to accommodate. In discussing assignments, I will need to be cognizant of the learning differences because a question that might seem nonsensical and evident to one type of learner, might be more confusing to a different type of learning. In this sense, it gives me more empathy into the needs of the students, more patience toward potential misunderstanding, and a greater chance to help the students meet or exceed his or her potential. I would also use assessments which took into consideration the different qualities within my classroom and within class projects I would create a variety of options each of which highlights a particular learning strategy.

(3) According to the Multiple Intelligences Survey, I have quite a bit of intrapersonal and interpersonal intellegence and a moderate amount of musical and kinesthetic intelligence. This makes sense because I enjoy analyzing people and situations; and, I decided to leave my old job because I was bored sitting still behind a desk and not talking to anyone for most of the day.

As I was enjoying the surveys so much, also I took Kolb's Learning Styles Inventory and discovered that my learning style consists of doing and feeling or what Kolb would abbreviate as "CE/AE." When these findings are placed on the two-by-two grid by Kolb, my learning style is accommodating. An accommodating learning style is often times referred to as a "hands-on" style and one that relies upon intuition over logic. In fact, these findings also did not surprise me because I have to do something at least two times before I understand how to do it; and, I'd much rather try to figure out how to put together a dresser from IKEA on my own as opposed to have to do the logical thing which would be to actually unfold and read the directions!