The Role of Learning Styles in Learning Process

THE ROLE OF LEARNING STYLES IN LEARNING PROCESS

Darmanto

6th Semester Student, STKIP Hamzanwadi Selong

All people would expect to succeed in all aspects of their life. Success in learning process is no exception. Basically, there is no learner who does not want to get success in her or his learning process. The problem is how to reach the success in learning. As we know, success does not come by itself, but it needs efforts and must be struggled for. An old proverb says, “There are many ways to Rome.” It suggests there are a lot of methodologies that we can do to reach the gates of success.

One of the methods that we can use to chase the success is by being aware our learning styles. After realising our learning styles, we can determine a proper strategy for our learning. The fusion between learning styles and appropriate strategy of learning will give rise to success in our learning process.

Actually, as stated by Rebecca L. Oxford, there are four dimensions of learning styles that are likely to be among those most strongly associated with learning, such as Sensory Preferences, Personality Types, Desired Degree of Generality, and Biological Differences. In this article, I would like to give the elucidation of Personality Types which consists of four strands:

First, extroverted versus Introverted personalities. Extroverted students gain their greatest energy from the external world. They interact with people and have many friends, some deep and some not. On the other hand, introverted students derive their energy from the internal world, seek solitude and tend to have just a few friends, but which are often very deep.

Second, intuitive-random versus sensing-sequential personalities. Intuitive-random students think in abstract, futuristic, large-scale, and non sequential ways. They like to create theories and new possibilities, often have sudden insights, and prefer their own learning. Differently, sensing-sequential learners are grounded in the here and now. They like facts rather than theories, want guidance and specific instruction from the teacher, and look for consistency.

Third, thinking versus feeling personalities. Thinking learners are oriented toward the stark truth, even if it hurts some people's feelings. They want to be viewed as competent and do not tend to offer praise easily even though they might secretly desire to be praised themselves. On the contrary, feeling learners value other people in very personal ways. They show empathy and compassion through words, not just behaviours, and say whatever is needed to smooth over difficult situations. Though they often wear their hearts on their sleeves, they want to be respected for personal contributions and hard work.

Fourth, closure-oriented/judging versus open/perceiving. Closure-oriented students want to reach judgments or completion quickly and want clarity as soon as possible. These students are serious, hard working learners who like to be given written information and enjoy specific tasks with deadlines. Meanwhile, open/perceiving learners take learning less seriously and treat it like a game to be enjoyed rather than a set of tasks to be completed. They dislike deadlines and want to have a good time and seem to soak up information by osmosis rather than hard effort.

Have you known your personality types? Find them out and chase your dreams.