Honey and Mumford Learning Style

Question: Discuss about the Honey and Mumford Learning Style. Answer: Introduction: Learning style refers to a wide range of opposing and challenging theories, which aim to account the variation in the learning systems of an individual. Understanding the learning process gives one the awareness of their preferred learning style, and one can develop their individual learning strategies to overcome the differences between teaching and learning styles. The notion of personalized learning styles has gained worldwide acknowledgment in education and classroom management theories from 1970s. According to Baldwin and Jones 2015, any learning style depends on the emotional, cognitive, and the environmental factors of an individual, as well as the prior experience. It is important for the educators to implement individual strategies for their students. There are several theories on learning styles, amongst those VAK Learning Style and Honey Mumford Learning Style seem to be well established worldwide. One of the most widely accepted learning style is VAK Learning Style, developed by psychologists in 1920s to classify the common ways of learning. Gholami and Bagheri 2013 state that, this learning style uses three major sensory receivers Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic to establish the prevailing learning style. Generally, in VAK Learning Style, one or two of these modalities are dominant in the learning process. When a learner chooses the visual mode of learning, he understands and retains new information more accurately, when in the learning process pictures, diagrams, charts etc are presented for instance. A learner with auditory dominant style prefers to listen and understand the new information. He/she responds better in a auditory dominant setting, for instance, in a group discussion or in a lecture. If the student can hear his/her own voice repeating back to the educator, that might be helpful as well. The Kinaesthetic learner prefers the learning process to be dominant wi th physical experiences. He/she will respond best if touching and moving is involved in the learning experience. Amongst the three learning procedures, I prefer the kinaesthetic learning, because I respond better while there are few activities involved in the learning process. While listening to lectures, I take notes; while reading I like to scan the study material first, then to focus on the details about the rest. I also like to learn innovative skills if I can get physically involved, like other kinaesthetic learners. I prefer assembling things and understanding the procedure, rather than looking at a chart and read, the theoretical approaches. However, there are some advantages and disadvantages of this particular learning process. The foremost advantage of the learning procedure is that, there are few situations, where the educator has to follow the hand-on learning, such as trying to train a teenager riding a bicycle. Apart from that, according to Schmeck 2013, the kinaesthetic learning process allows the learners to observe and understand the practical methods, which enhances the learning procedure. Nevertheless, this has also been proven insignificant while the students are trying to learn complex theoretical subjects. If a student wants to obtain high grades in school, there is no other way than reading and writing. Another learning style, Honey Mumford Style, was developed on the work of Kolb, and four distinct learning styles were identified, such as, Activist, Theorist, Pragmatist and Reflector. Activists are those who like to learn things by doing it. They have an open-minded approach and like to brainstorm while learning. The theorists are those people, who like to know the theories behind the actions. They learn by models, diagrams, and statistics and prefer to analyse them. Pragmatists prefer to learn by putting the theories into the practical world. They try to experiment and try new ideas. The reflectors are those, who learn by observing and understanding the experiences. They also prefer to view experiences from numbers of perspectives by collecting data from primary and secondary sources (Manolis et al. 2013). My learning style is reflector, because I follow the careful way of thinking to understand and learn things. I choose to consider all the implications first. In fact, I prefer to observe others talking in the meetings and get a drift about the context to conclude. Just like other styles, this learning procedure also has few advantages and drawbacks. The style raises questions in the mind of the learner and helps them to come up with new ideas, but at the same time, they tend to wait a lot before starting the work and easily distracted. Several theories of learning style have been criticised by many scholars, some of them even questioned the scientific base of the theories. However, many educators have shown that different learning styles have worked in their classroom environment, though if a student wants to score well in his career, he has to follow a combination of different learning styles to enhance their knowledge. Reference List Baldwin, S. and Jones, S., 2015, May. Matching Teaching Style To Learning Style In Higher Education: The Beneficial Impact On University Students' Academic Performance. InELSIN 2015. Schmeck, R.R. ed., 2013.Learning strategies and learning styles. Springer Science Business Media. Gholami, S. and Bagheri, M.S., 2013. Relationship between VAK learning styles and problem solving styles regarding gender and students' fields of study.Journal of Language Teaching and Research,4(4), pp.700-706. Manolis, C., Burns, D.J., Assudani, R. and Chinta, R., 2013. Assessing experiential learning styles: A methodological reconstruction and validation of the Kolb Learning Style Inventory.Learning and Individual Differences,23, pp.44-52.