Identification, understanding, and perceptions of learning styles: National Board Certified teachers

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine what teachers describe as being important in their identification, understanding, and perceptions of learning and teaching styles. When teachers can accurately identify their own learning and teaching styles, they can identify the learning styles of their students. When a teacher can identify learning styles they have a greater potential of teaching to them. When a teacher adapts his/her teaching style to match a student's learning style, significant improvement in student understanding, achievement, and retention occurs. The learning style research component of this study was based on the Durm and Dunn learning style preferences model. Using this basis, a series of structured and unstructured questions were formulated for the qualitative research. National Board Certified teachers were chosen as the sample group. Nine teachers in the state of Colorado were identified and interviewed. These teachers were chosen because of their continuing education of post licensure studies and their commitment to higher education. The NBPTS believes the single most important action this country can take to improve schools and student learning is to strengthen teaching. With its leadership NBPTS is making teaching a profession dedicated to student learning and high standards for professional NBPTS performance. The NBPTS has raised the standards for teachers, strengthened their educational preparation through the standards, and created performance-based assessments that demonstrate accomplished application of the standards (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 2002b). The National Board Certificate (NBC) measures a teacher's practice against high rigorous standards. After analyzing the data obtained from the interview process, 13 identified emergent themes were critically examined. As a result of the examination, I determined that a distinct gap exists between teacher's learning style identification and teaching style implementation. It seems as though the teachers did not specifically identify student's learning styles to formulate their teaching strategies; instead, the focus was more on the way the teachers learn. This study provides a basis for future research that should determine ways to implement learning style identification as a more important component of teacher and student education. The research shows a significant increase of student comprehension and retention when teachers are able to teach to multiple learning styles.