How Preferences Affect Learning

Extraversion:

Cognitive Style: The extraversion preference is expressed as a cognitive style that favors:

• Learning by talking and physically engaging the environment
• Letting attention flow outward toward objective events
• Talking to help thoughts to form and become clear
• Learning through interactions, verbal and non-verbal

Study Style: Extraverted study styles favor:

• Acting first, reflecting after
• Plunging into new material
• Starting interactions needed to stimulate reflection and concentration
• Having a strong, interesting, external reason for studying, beyond learning for its own sake
• Avoiding distractions that will cut into their concentration
• Studying with a friend
• Studying to prepare to teach someone

Instruction That Fits E's: The extravert types do their best work with:

• Opportunities to think out loud; e.g., one-to-one with the teacher, classroom discussions, working with another student, action projects involving people
• Learning activities that have an effect outside the learner, such as visible results from a project
• Teachers who manage classroom dialogue so that extraverts have ways to clarify their ideas aloud before they add them to class discussion
• Assignments that let them see what other people are doing and is regarded important

Introversion:

Cognitive Style: The introversion preference is expressed as a cognitive style that favors:

• Quiet reflection
• Keeping one's thoughts inside until they are polished
• Letting attention flow inward
• Being engrossed in inner events: ideas, impressions, concepts
• Learning in private, individual ways

Study Style: Introverted study styles favor:

• Reflecting first, acting after looking for new data to fit into the internal dialogue that is always going on
• Working privately-perhaps checking one's work with someone who is trusted
• Reading as the main way of studying
• Listening to others talk about topics being studied, and privately processing what they take in
• Extraverting just when they choose

Instruction that Fits I's: These types like situations that let them:

• Work internally with their own thoughts: listening, observing, lab work, reading, writing
• Process experiences at own pace
• Present the results of their work in forms that let them keep privacy
• Have ample time to polish their work inside before needing to present it
• Have time to reflect before answering the teacher's questions
• Tie their studies to their own personal interests, their internal agenda

Sensing

Cognitive style: The sensing preference is expressed in a cognitive style that favors:

• being careful to get the facts right
• memory of facts
• observing specifics, absorbing data
• starting with concrete experience, then moving to the abstract aiming toward soundness of understanding, staying connected to practical realities aroundoneself
• attending to what is in the present moment

Instruction that fits S's: Sensing types do their best work with:

• instruction that allows them to hear and touch as well as see (or only read about) what they are learning
• hands-on labs, material that can be handled
• relevant films and other audio-visuals
• computer-assisted instruction
• first hand experience that gives practice for the skills and concepts to belearned
• teachers who provide concrete experiences first in any learning sequence, before textbooks
• teachers who show them exactly what facts and skills the adult world expects of them
• teachers who do not move "too quickly" through material, touching just the high spots before jumping from thought to thought
• assignments that allow them to start with facts before having to imagine possibilities
• skills and facts they can use in their present lives

Intuition

Cognitive Style: The intuition preference is expressed in cognitive style that prefers:

• · being caught up in inspiration
• moving quickly in seeing meanings and associations
• reading between the lines
• relying on easy use of words more than memory of facts
• focusing on general concepts more than details and practical facts
• relying on insight more than careful observation

Instruction that fits N's: They perform their best work with:

• assignments that put them on their own initiative
• real choices in the ways they work out their assignments
• opportunities for self-instruction individually or with a group
• opportunities to be inventive and original
• a system of individual contracts between teacher and student
• fascinating new possibilities
• experience rich with complexities
• work that stays fresh by calling for new skills, not just repetition of existing skills
• teachers with brisk pace, who don't go "too slowly"

Thinking

Cognitive style: A preference for thinking is expressed in a cognitive style that favors:

• making impersonal judgments
• aiming toward objective truth
• analyzing experiences to find logical principles underlying them
• keeping mental life in order through logical principles
• staying cool and free of emotional concerns while making decisions
• naturally critiquing things, finding flaws to fix, aiming toward clarity and precision

Study style: The thinking preference is reflected in a study style that favors:

• logically constructed subject matter
• classrooms free from emotional distractions
• interesting problems to analyze
• wanting to bring logical order out of confused situations
• wanting to get mastery over material

Instruction that fits T's: the thinking types do their best work with:

• teachers who are logically organized
• subjects that show cause and effect relationships
• feedback that shows them specific objective achievement

Feeling

Cognitive style: A preference for feeling is expressed in a cognitive style that favors:

• making caring judgments
• taking into account people's motive and personal value
• attending to relationships between people, seeking harmony
• personalizing issues and causes that have high priority
• staying tuned to emotional aspects of life
• naturally appreciating people and things

Study style: Students who prefer feeling judgment usually favor:

• having topics to study that they care deeply about, with a human angle to them
• learning through personal relationships rather than impersonal, individualized activities
• warm and friendly classrooms
• learning by helping, responding to other's needs

Instruction that fits F's: The feeling types do their best work with:

• teachers who value personal rapport with students
• assignments that have a goal of contributing to others
• receiving appreciation for them as persons
• harmonious small-group work

Judgment

Cognitive style: Running one's outer life with a judgment process is expressed as a cognitive style that favors:

• having a clear structure in a learning situation from the beginning
• aiming toward completions and getting closure
• having life organized into an orderly plan
• looking for consistency, wanting to be able to predict how things will come out

Study style: J types typically adopt a study style that includes:

• planned and scheduled work, drawing energy from the steady, orderly process of doing work
• wanting to know exactly what they are accountable for and be what standards they will be judged
• seeing assignments as serious business, and persisting in doing them

Instructions that fits Js: The J types do their best work with:

• preplanned structure, and a teacher who carefully provides it
• predictability and consistency
• formalized instruction that moves on orderly sequences
• prescribed tasks, milestones, completion points, ceremonies to honor successful completions

Perception

Cognitive style: running one's outer life with a judgment process is expressed as a cognitive style that favors:

• open exploration without a preplanned structure
• staying open to new experiences
• managing emerging problems with plans that emerge with the problems
• having the stimulation of something new and difference

Study style: P types typically adopt a study style that includes:

• spontaneously following their curiosity
• studying when the surges of impulsive energy come to them
• studying to discover something new to them
• finding novel ways to do routine assignments so as to spark enough interest to do the assignments

Instructions that fits Ps: The P types do their best work when:

• they can pursue problems in their own way
• they have genuine choices in assignments, as with a system of individual contracts in which the student can negotiate some of the activities
• assignments hold their interest
• their work feels like play

• Talk out my thoughts as they
• Interact with other people or things while learning
• Plunge in
• Try out ideas right away

• Keep thought inside until they're come to me polished
• Try things out in my thoughts first
• Do my learning in private, individual ways
• Look inside myself for ideas and energy
• Take plenty of time before I act

• Doing something practical, useful right not
• Starting with solid facts
• Going step by step in new material
• Starting with known things and adding on
• Starting with first-hand experience that gives practice in things to be learned
• Starting with hands-on things

• Doing something that catches my imagination
• Starting with interesting concepts
• Finding my own way in new material
• Exploring possibilities
• Sampling new skills rather than practicing familiar ones
• Starting with a concept or idea

• Teachers who organize the classroom through harmony and personal relations
• Feedback that shows appreciation of me as a person
• Personal relationships as the key to my learning
• Issues and causes I care deeply about
• Situations where helping people is the main work

• Have things organized in a clear plan
• Have deadlines and stay well ahead of them
• Do my work in a steady way toward completion
• Know just what I am accountable for
• Have instruction that is organized and move in predictable ways

• Can explore things without preplanning
• Spontaneously follow my curiosity
• Do my work when the surges of interest take hold of me
• Have genuine choices in assignments
• Have work that feels like play