Reading this chapter about learning styles resonated with me on a different level. Not because I agreed with them, but because, in some ways, I didn’t. Bruce Hendry’s story at the beginning was a great setup for the rest of the chapter. His story showed the different ways people learn and move through life and that there isn’t one specific, ideal, prescribed way to learn. Bruce learned about himself throughout his many experiences and endeavors to become wealthy and “figured rich people were probably no smarter than he was, they just had knowledge he lacked” (Brown et al., 2014). As we learned, Bruce became extremely successful and wealthy. He learned from his experiences and from others, creating his own mental models and structure building, and implementing what worked best for him, and not assimilating to a dominate, one size fits all learning style. Can you imagine if he had? Yikes!
Reading Bruce’s story, and then the examples of the kids from Kenya and Brazil, reminded me of my learning and what I choose to share and what people choose to accept from me or what they see as valid. There have been times when my learning from my personal lived experiences have been discredited, like it added no value to the discussion. When reading Robert Sternberg’s learning styles, I remember telling myself, this sounds a lot like the concept of someone being book smart versus street smart. To recap, according to Brown et al. (2014), Sternberg proposes 3 intelligences, or learning styles:
1.
Analytical
intelligence is our ability to complete problem-solving tasks, such as
those typically contained in tests,
2.
Creative
intelligence is our ability to synthesize and apply existing knowledge and
skills to deal with new and unusual situations, and
3. Practical intelligence is our ability to adapt to everyday life—to understand what needs to be done in a specific setting and then do it.
The authors suggest practical intelligence would be considered street smarts, and I would suggest that analytical intelligence is considered book smarts. The kids in Kenya who excelled at identifying natural herbs weren’t considered smart because they did worse than their peers on tests that assessed academic, or analytical, knowledge. But because these herbs were used in their daily lives, “children who could identify [them] are better adapted to succeed in their environment than children without that knowledge” (p. 148). Same with the kids in Brazil who understood math in the form of creating their street businesses, but not in the “abstract, pencil-and-paper format” that is expected of a student (p. 149). These kids excelled at practical intelligence but were considered “stupid” when failing at analytical intelligence. Depending on who you asked, one was accepted and expected more than the other?
What blew my
mind next was the suggestion given by the authors that “there is no reason to
suspect that kids who excelled at informal, indigenous knowledge can’t catch up
to or even surpass their peers in academic learning when given the appropriate
opportunities” (p. 149). When
given the appropriate opportunities. When given equitable resources. When given a
chance. When being trusted to learn. When being deserving of learning. Simply,
deserving. If students with practical intelligence are given appropriate
opportunities to grow their analytical intelligence, instead of being
considered stupid, there would be a lot more Bruces in the world.
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