Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

Learning Styles

In just a few minutes on the Internet, you can find a range of different approaches to learning styles. While doing research for this book, we came across one paper that identified 71 different approaches, some with very little basis in evidence or measurable impact.*

The learning styles approach we will use comes from the work of Bernice McCarthy. In the 1970s, McCarthy looked at how children were being taught and noticed a lot of focus on one approach, teaching facts, and very little on explaining the reasons why or how things worked. The model she created is very similar to ones developed by other people, and in particular can be mapped to Carl Jung's psychological types. You may have come across these same basic ideas if you've ever taken a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Many of the approaches identify a small number of dimensions and then create a set of categories by combining either end of each dimension. McCarthy used two dimensions to describe the learner's approach to information in her learning styles:

PERCEPTION OF INFORMATION, FROM ABSTRACT TO EXPERIENCE

At the abstract end of this dimension, learners are considering patterns, ideas, and concepts, whereas at the experience end, they are doing, recalling, or imagining an activity or experience.

PROCESSING INFORMATION, FROM ACTION TO REFLECTION

At the action end of this dimension, learners are taking an active role, gathering, interacting, or doing what is being learned, whereas in reflection, learners ...