Personal Learning Styles

Personal Learning Style

Byron Taylor

University of Phoenix

Gen/101 Skills for Lifelong Learning

Group ID #ONO61CS04

Daigre Victorine, Phd

May 11, 2006

In the course of writing this paper I have learned a great deal about the styles of learning and how to incorporate personality traits into effectual learning principles. This paper will consist of an analogy of the components of my learning style to the facets of my personality. This will aid in strategically creating a plan to use in improving my time management and study skills.

Components of learning style

I believe that my personal learning style, as do most people, encompasses many traits that extend far beyond categories and agree that these are tools to assist an individual in understanding capabilities, rather than give a definition of what type of person learns under different situations. For instance, according to my scores in The Pathways to Learning Assessment, I am highly developed in Musical and Interpersonal learning and underdeveloped in the concepts of the Visual-Spatial and Naturalistic learner. The fact is while I am very musically inclined, I have never created rhythms out of words, beat out rhythms with my hand, written a rap, changed materials to songs I already know, or used music while studying. On the other hand, I realize that using some components of the Musical-Rhythmic learner I might be able to develop an additional style of studying, by evaluating the effectiveness of those components.

The components of an Interpersonal learner are traits that seem aligned with how I believe I would best learn. When I was in sigh school, I thrived in the classes which were interactive in nature, as opposed to lecture driven. I rarely understood the need for slide shows or other visual aids and often felt they had little bearing on the subject even though some of my classmates seemed to believe they helped them immensely. So if a category that fit most of what I believe is conducive to me personally I would deem myself an Interpersonal Learner.

Personality and Learning

By using the Personality Spectrum I was able to ascertain that according to the method of the scoring, I was classified as a Giver. This was no surprise to me because I have always been very emotional, passionate, honest, caring, and trusting. However, I must add I was conflicted about taking the personality profiling seriously. Several readings were necessary, but to my chagrin I am still inept concerning beliefs that personality plays a key role in adult learning. I realize several studies have shown that personality is an important factor, but I have always felt that a person makes a choice and can be disciplined. I once went on a job interview and the first

thing that was handed to me after I gave them my resume, was a personality test of some sort. I begin answering the questions listed all the while becoming more frustrated because I knew