Practical, useful, encouraging!

(by a spokesperson from Ballarat Secondary College, excerpt)

If you were going to be asked to ‘learn something new and difficult’ how would you go about doing it? You might find that you need to talk with someone or find a quiet place with natural light and that a cup of tea would help. Others may find that breaking the task down to a checklist and then lying on the floor while listening to music may make the task more manageable.

At Ballarat Secondary College we are discovering that knowing a student’s learning style assists us in developing personalised learning strategies for the individual and the preferred learning styles of entire class cohorts. Undertaking Learning Styles Analysis, with both our staff and students, has opened up a greater understanding of how we learn. In the past we have worked with Bloom’s Taxonomy and Gardiner’s Multiple Intelligences amongst others, which was beneficial, but the Learning Styles Analysis takes this to another level, one that is far richer and holistic.

The LSA brings the complex interrelationship between biological, learned and environmental learning preferences into a simple diagram. In addition, it interweaves brain dominance, sensory modalities along with physical, environmental, social and attitudinal components of learning in such a way students as young as twelve through to staff can successfully interpret it. All agree that they have learnt more about themselves and others as learners.

(...) At Ballarat Secondary College we are so impressed with Keys to Success and Learning Styles Analysis we are embedding it into our College curriculum.