Learning styles questionaire

I had a go at the NCSU questionnaire today. I came out as Reflective 7 (= towards the risk of never getting anything done!); Intuitive 9; Visual 3 (the most balanced score I got) and Global 9. Most of this computes generally with how I think about how I approach personal learning eg. in this 23 things course, although I was a bit frustrated with not being able to pick more than one option on some items. Reading the notes I was particularly interested in the importance of wholes and parts, big picture and details, which I think about a lot in relation to my ESL teaching and also in my own learning. (As an example, in my community choir, I get very frustrated if a new song is presented line by line if I haven’t heard the whole thing first.)


I’ve used the VARK learning styles questionnaire in the past with Further Study ESL students, so was interested to have a go at this one.

After that, I went back to an article by Dr Helen McGrath, who spoke to us at CAE a couple of years ago. She is very critical of the whole area of learning styles (and VARK is used as a particular example), but does talk about the value of asking students to identify their preferred learning activities. She does promote understanding of multiple intelligences. There’s a questionnaire she refers to but it’s not an interactive one. So when I get edublog and wiki savvy, I’ll be able to upload these docs with my comments, right?

Plenty of material to keep thinking about in all this, so thank you for putting these learning issues into the course.