Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Learning by doing

There are three types of learners. Those who learn by hearing - auditory, those who learn by seeing - visual, and those who learn by doing - kinesthetic. I think a recent trend in education has focused on kinesthetic, because most people are best suited for it. I myself am much quicker to pick up concepts when I write a line of code than when I hear or read about it. But today, sitting on the toilet I had a revelation. I learn by doing because my whole life has been hands on. The trend toward kinesthetic learning is perpetuated by the trend toward kinesthetic learning. And now, as I enter the "Real" world I recognize the fact that I need learning skills that I don't have. I need to be able to sit down, read a paragraph and apply it to the world around me or listen to a two hour description of a solution and be able to apply that to the current problem. I haven't been taught how to listen to lectures, I've been taught how to take notes. I do a sample problem and score pretty well on a test, but what about those problems where there are no samples? The worst part is, future teachers of america learned by doing, so they will inevitably teach... by doing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm, interesting concept... maybe I'll bring it up in my Educational Psychology class next week. Though, for music, I guess it is all hands on stuff for the most part. :)

-Sarah

Jessie K. said...

yup, i agree, and it annoys me to no end, as you know. grrr. although for some things, like sports kinesthetic really is a large part of it. to disagree with the previous comment though, id say music is better taught by auditory skills, more along the lines of suzuki and kodaly (although lots of kodaly followers like orff are more into kinesthetics) so yup. :-)