When faced with students who have learning skills, styles, and backgrounds very different from their own, teachers can promote academic rigor by engaging in reality pedagogy. This approach proposes seven strategies, or Cs: Cogenerative dialogues (in which teachers solicit feedback from a dissimilar group of students); coteaching (in which students…

How important is it that every student in a school is excited about learning? Should a student be allowed to use all his/her strengths in learning? Do you know someone who wasn't a particularly good student but has been very successful in life? What these seemingly unrelated questions have in common is an appreciation for the range of talents that…

What goes on in most classrooms depends on the cognitive style of teachers, not students. (Author)

The Relational Thinking Style (RTS) identifies five generic learning styles: transient, digital, multi-digital, multi-relational, and meta-relational. (Author/MLF)

Noted educator Carol Ann Tomlinson shares the insights that shaped her thinking about informative assessment. Informative assessment goes beyond tests and the grade book. It means assessing students both formally and informally in multiple ways and giving frequent, productive feedback on student work. Informative assessment isn't separate from…

Styles are hypothetical constructs that help explain the teaching-learning process. Ten learning styles and six teaching styles are suggested. (Author)

There are many effective styles of instruction; and every teacher should be skilled in at least one, and preferably in several. (Author/MLF)

Most teachers can respond to differences in student learning styles. Eighteen elements of learning style, categorized as environmental, emotional, sociological, and physical are described. (Author/MLF)

Summarizes research findings on relationships among modality strengths, learning, and personal characteristics. (Author/MLF)

Cultures have distinctive learning style patterns, but the great variation among individuals within groups requires educators to use diverse teaching strategies. Researchers identify three kinds of information about culture and learning styles: observation-based descriptions of cultural groups of learners, data-based descriptions of specific…

School districts should let parents, students, and teachers establish alternative schools to accommodate differences in learning styles. (Author)

A teacher reports on helpful advice she received from a colleague when she started teaching: to teach students in the cognitive mode in which they learn best (auditory, visual, kinesthetic, or tactile). (TE)

Although neuroscience has much to offer teaching and learning conceptualizations, educators must be cautious about applying lab research to classrooms. Brain research seems hazy, confusing, and contradictory because it is new. Myths about synapses, low-stress learning, memorization, enrichment, and learning styles are debunked. (MLH)

Differing world views and cultural expectations affect how teachers and students relate to one another. (Author)

Learning styles represent a type of aptitude-treatment interaction suggesting that a person's distinctive characteristics (aptitudes) can be matched to a specific treatment (instructional method) yielding a more effective outcome than could otherwise have been achieved. Special education research does not support categorizing youngsters or using…