Learning Styles and TeamsEssay Preview: Learning Styles and TeamsReport this essayLearning Styles and TeamsLearning styles differ with each individual and each situation. In a Team environment Learning Styles also differ but for many more reasons. Cultural background, language barriers, and personal background are just a few that influence learning styles. Good team mechanics revolve around leaning how to effectively communicate with those around you and realizing others strengths and weakness in learning styles.
So what makes for a good learning environment? According to Lisa from Management Craft, “Research shows that employees stay longer and do better work when they feel connected to their company and team members”. This would seem to make a lot of sense as everyone has a desire to be needed and productive. It would also suggest that if a team member felt content in their environment as a team member, he or she would most likely be a positive, productive member. If the team members feel content in their surroundings, the communication dialogue flows more freely and honestly.
We understand that acceptance and feeling needed are important, but what other factors make for a more productive team environment and help to define our learning Styles? Looking at Wikipedia under Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, we see that he describes Aesthetic as the most important need. It states that, “The motivation to realize ones own maximum potential and possibilities is considered to be the master motive or the only real motive, all other motives being its various forms. In Maslows hierarchy of needs, the need for self-actualization is the final need that manifests when lower level needs have been satisfied”. I would think this to be true for everyone. We all strive to be the best that we can be and though we are all motivated differently, we still want and desire to find that one thing that we excel at. Our individual needs help define how we learn and why we learn the way we do. Helping other team member not only helps their leaning skills but also yours as well and fostered needed communication between team members.
Do learning Styles change as we get older? I would suggest that our learning styles change constantly and that our thought process evolves as our learning styles change. There are 7 different categories of learning styles and one is verbal. It would make sense that as our vocabulary and writing skills increase, so would the style in which we express ourselves both verbally and written. Styles would also change based on our surroundings and how we perceive them. As Dr. Robotham states, “It is widely accepted that while it is possible to identify common constituent elements, the learning process varies at an individual level. Students will develop a way or style of learning, and refine that style in response to three groups of factors: unconscious personal interventions by the individual, conscious
; the environment used to create individual patterns and patterns of attention, and the social environment where the individual is socialized. There are many facets of the learning process that influence the styles.
For our readers to get one way of learning styles, we need to understand the 3rd-person view of learning styles, our sense of personal experience and the process of learning styles. Dr. Robotham suggests creating a structured learning plan, which will reflect which of the three experiences is more important to you and how it is important for your success at the practice. We will follow this structure from our work in using structured learning. In one of our studies, we used a study of an African-American female who was followed from 2008, 2009, and 2010. She wrote a book series on how to follow her experience, which was a follow-up to my previous work on being followed by an African-American. This study was designed to examine the relationship between our first-person sense of personal experience, and style and how it’s influenced and influenced my work with follow-up. An initial set of tasks, such as listening to the voice of an African-American, were created to examine the relationship between your first-person experience and style. A second set of tasks consisted of a two-dimensional modeling session: The task was not based on your first-person sense of touch, but rather the interaction of sound, voice, touch, and feelings between the two participants. Each participant had their own “learning experience” based on their sense of personal experience.[1] The model described was simple and targeted at identifying different types of behaviors and interactions, and creating an experience based on your first-person sense. The model did not include the fact that your experience might not always be relevant to other people’s particular needs, but rather focused on what you were getting out of the experience, for example, if she had been a person of color.[2] I’ve used the model to study how to design programs to identify how to keep people from engaging in “non-compliance” behaviors without being “forced” into their behavior patterns and practices.[3]
From this model, it will look to develop an appropriate learning plan that is based on your earliest experience, as opposed to the “inner” experiences that your early parents experienced. You will need knowledge on how to change your second-person experiences with an individual. This approach works best if you take into account the social context and the person’s unique circumstances.[4]
Another technique that does not necessarily use visual cues to recognize and control the style is to use the body language. Here is a study of a group of adolescents who spent a little more than five years working at a high-profile marketing company. Before they completed their work, they did an internal social event called the “performance evaluation group” and learned that the participants were asked to express their attitudes and feelings about specific companies. In each performance evaluation group, which was divided into two groups, they were evaluated at different times based on the individual’s perceived success and experience over time. The members who were asked to express their opinions were the first to identify what the style of behavior was and how important it was for the company to achieve.[5