Linking teaching approaches and learning styles: how can it help students?

Although limited, one study revealed that the preferred learning style for paramedic students is that of assimilator. Assimilators prefer a more passive/reflective role in the learning situation and tend to favor lectures with an emphasis on concepts, assigned readings, exams and assigned tasks. By increasing complexity and requiring more self-directed activities in your teaching approach, you are encouraging students (particularly the assimilators) to move from a role of dependence on you for facts and direction to a role in which they begin to 1) seek some knowledge on their own; 2) assume responsibility for analyzing potential solutions to problems; and 3) justify decisions. You should be able to document their progress toward independence through clinical and field evaluations by preceptors. Students should reach the point of competently assuming control of patient care for the majority of patients they encounter by the end of their field internship. Instructors should keep in mind that there is currently no consensus on a definition of learning styles, and different indicators identify different factors. Learning style inventory results, regardless of the instrument used, should not be a primary factor in decisions to alter curriculum approaches. However, although there is inconsistency in the data on its reliability and validity, and Kolb's LSI measures only certain factors, the results that are available seem significant enough to at least consider learning styles as one resource for adapting and sequencing our teaching methodologies. A learning-styles inventory administered to students at the beginning of a training program would provide faculty with the knowledge of the preferred learning style of that class. This knowledge could prove extremely helpful, not only in planning classroom activities, but also in developing approaches for remediating students experiencing difficulty in mastering the curriculum content. The more knowledge we have about our students, the greater our likelihood of success in reaching our ultimate goal of providing the best possible learning experience.