Intelligence Types vs. Preferred Learning Styles
Each term, I have my students take a learning style assessment, in which they determine if they are auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learners. I was wondering if there has ever been any research or findings as to whether a person's intelligence types (top three) is correlated to their preferred learning styles?
am not sure, but I do believe they compliment each other. I look at the seven intelligences and learning styles of my students and often they are very similar. The kinesthetic learners often score high in kinestetic intelligence. This is also upon discuss their favorite way to learn and they exel in sports. I have found the same goes with those who have interpersonal intelligence. They tend to work in group learning and arn the best by talking abou tthe subject matter. Those with musical intelligence seem to like nmemonic and rhythm learning devices.
That might be a good topic for a thesis or dissertation, Melissa. I'm not sure there has been any quantitative work done on the topic, but it seems to make sense. How could a person have strong Musical Intelligence without good auditory learning skills? Personally I'm strongly into the Logical-Mathematical side and find I do best reading material, although have learned to see things in systems format too (studied a little engineering on my own, but the same ideas carry over to many other fields).
One angle to approach this might be to look at Myers-Briggs personality types and see how, or if, they correlate with learning styles. I guess the bottom line is that intelligence is complicated and learning styles have to be flexible to fit many different types of understanding. Unfortunately, large classrooms and (as the text said) emphasis on standardized testing does not fit this situation very well.
Learning styles are the methods by which individuals learn information, while intelligence is the term for a person's ability to learn.
Combining the two ideas can result in an accurate measurement of individual intelligence.
I feel in teaching and management identifying an individual's learning and communication style is key.If teaching methods are not appropriate for the individual learning style the student or employee will struggle with the concepts. Teaching or learning through a preferred learning style will improve results.
