An Article by: Adeel
Ahmad Shahid (Pakistan’s Context)
Mankind owns a spectacular
learning mechanism and most of us are well aware of the statement that learning
starts from the lap of mother and continues till death. Also one of the basic aspects
of learning is that everybody learns to manage and manages to learn for achieving
his/her life and career objectives simultaneously within the lifespan. Learning
significantly impacts the human behaviors, and more specifically we can call
them the learning behaviors.
We channelize our personal and professional
objectives with new thoughts and methods but still a question arises that how
many of us have ever though to manage our learning behaviors? Now if we think
about the learning behaviors so there are many questions that are still
unanswered. For the very first time back in 2008 when I asked myself that what
kind of learner I am, so a few queries originated in my mind – they might also
be most frequent among the readers’ minds. The significant of them are:
- Is there any such thing
like "learning Behavior"?
- If yes; then what is my
learning behavior?
- Is there any technique of
efficient learning?
- Indeed what kind of learner
I am?
- Is my learning environment
favorable enough to learn efficiently?
- How can I manage my
learning behavior?
We can justify the existence of
learning behavior of humans because of the inborn learning attribute. Now the
major concern is to increase the effectiveness and efficiency in learning our
behaviors by observing the learning styles and their proper management. There
are different learning styles’ models and VAK – Visual, Auditory and
Kinesthetic, is one of them. This psychological model can make us an efficient
learner.
We learn; when we hear or read –
auditory learning, we can do better if we visualize it in a picture, video or
demonstration – visual learning, and we can bring best out of it if we
personally get involve or demonstrate it – kinesthetic learning. Some people
are more visual learners than auditory while others are more kinesthetic than
visual and/or auditory and vice versa. It does not mean that if I am an
auditory learner than I cannot visualize or demonstrate things.
One can find out his/ her
efficiency in all modes of learning and make an ample mix out of this for a
paramount outcome. The better way is to perform a self-learning aptitude test in
all three types by considering the same subject and see how much you learn what
you hear, visualize or by getting involved physically. Now make a learning mix
according to your aptitude so that you learn supreme.
In our cultural context it is not
so easy and also there is no ideal state in reality. For instance in our higher
educational institutes mostly the instructors depend on explanatory presentation
with a lot of content in them or on a white board by filling it with
alpha-numeric data with least visuals and kinesthetic stuff in it. The major
impact of this factor over the mind of students is that most of them start
getting mentally absent within fifteen to forty five minutes.
While associating the learning behavior with the
cultural context we might face difficulties yet we have to make ourselves
capable of understanding and adapting diverse learning styles. On the other
hand; awareness regarding the modes of learning is needed and those who find
themselves socially responsible can take initiatives in the form of capacity
building sessions, creative writing and through other possible means.