Learning Profile Considerations

While there are many aspects to what could be included in a learning profile, the main areas for consideration are:

• Learning style or preferences: This refers to the ways in which individuals are affected by their environments, as well as the types of learning conditions or contexts they perceive as matching their needs. This gives both students and teachers a vocabulary for beginning the discussion in terms of what works, what doesn’t work, and what to consider changing if/as/when difficulties arise.
• Intelligence/strengths: Howard Gardiner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences (8) provides a framework for teachers who recognize that a traditional approach to IQ does not yield much instructionally useful information. Additionally, theorist Robert Sternberg has proposed another way of thinking about student intelligence that divides intelligence into three main categories: analytical, practical, and problem-solving.
• Cultural/Familial Influences: Increasingly, researchers and educators are finding that culture plays an important role in how learners orient themselves to learning. The goal of the teacher is to design universally accessible learning opportunities, and in some cases this can only fully be done well if he or she understands the cultural variables that impact a student.

There is also a growing research base delineating individual physiological and brain-based factors that have implications for teaching and learning. In particular, determining what factors constitute “stress” for learners is an emerging area that will help teachers and students craft more appropriate learning opportunities. What we have always believed intuitively as a result of our own experience as learners can now be demonstrated with more scientific evidence. Dr. John Medina summarizes this reality as a “brain rule,” explaining, “Stressed brains don’t learn the same way as non-stressed brains” (p. 186). Medina reports that significant or prolonged stress can significantly curtail memory, recall, and overall problem solving abilities.

In a differentiated classroom, the various ways in which teachers attempt to know their students better through assessment still do not yield prescriptions for teaching. In other words, a teacher who is completely aware of a student’s preference or learning style may well know that an activity will likely go against a student’s grain, so to speak. The knowledge provides advance insight into what supports a student might need before struggles occur, where to anticipate providing encouragement, and in what ways a student’s learning experience may be planned for in support of maximal learning.

You should not conclude that teachers in a differentiated classroom attempt to differentiate all things at all times to match their student’s interests or learning profiles – because that would be close to impossible, as well as ill-advised. But increasingly, as teachers look for clues as to why a student learns in one setting while struggling in others, or why a segment of their student population struggles under certain learning conditions while others don’t, then such teachers are positioned to make more informed decisions.