'Teachers who cater for different needs use a variety of teaching approaches'. Having come from a clinical rather than academic background, I had no real preconceived ideas as too the most efficient means of facilitating student learning in a university setting. We attempt to impart information and share our knowledge with patients on a daily basis but is this a transferable skill to assist medical students. The comment to my initial PBL group on day 1 was "If this is the best PBL session we have all year, this group is in a lot of trouble". In a previous module for this course we were asked to complete a VARK questionnaire to determine our own learning style followed by a discussion on appropriate techniques that could be employed to accommodate the differing styles. There is no doubt that my interaction with the students is very much different to that in 2009.
For me, the most difficult aspect of a student-centred form of learning to overcome was embracing the concept of a facilitator rather than adopt the role of lecturer/resource person. I could supply them with all the necessary information from accredited sources (I went into each session over-prepared) thereby enhancing their knowledge base but completely defeating the goal of making the students self-directed learners. Hopefully now a reasonable balance has been achieved. Being able to adopt a flexible teaching style has not been an issue given that it is an approach required in General Practice as we deal with patients of different ages as well as educational and cultural background. Trying to be all things to all people and adapt to the various learning styles can be a disservice to both the students and the educator if the approach becomes vague and too generic.
Fleming and Mills (1992) makes the comment, "The most realistic approach to the accommodation of learning styles in teaching programs should involve empowering students through knowledge of their own learning styles to adjust their learning behaviour to learning programs they encounter ie. to know themselves and operate in a metacognitive fashion". One would hope that in a post-graduate degree, ie. medicine, the students would have already adopted a learning style even if they couldn't categorize it. The task then of the tutor/facilitator may be, just as stated above, to assist the student to make their style transferable to differing situations.
Given the change in technology, education and extracurricular activities/hobbies over the past 30 years, it would be interesting to compare the VARK scores of a cohort of medical students from 1982 to the current group and also individual scores 30 years apart. As mentioned by Tara Brabazon (2006) in her discourse on "the Ipodification of Education" lectures, if well researched, resourced and presented should appeal to the various learning styles as they can be "multi-modal formations, using sound, vision, gestures and often scent and touch. As a space where people gather to think about complex ideas, the lecture has pivotal symbolic importance". Therefore a good lecture is a good lecture whether it is 1982 or 2012.
Brabazon,T. (2006) Socrates in Earpods?: The Ipodification of Education. in Fast Capitalism, (2),1. http//www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/2_1/brabazon.htm
Fleming,N. & Mills,C. (1992) Not Another Inventory, Rather a Catalyst for Reflection, To Improve the Academy. 11,p.137.
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