Styles in Teaching and Learning.

Abstract

It is fashionable today to talk about learning and teaching style. 1 However, like so many other concepts in the professional vocabulary of educators, style is a double-edged sword. It can be used to clarify and analyze teaching and learn ing, or it can simply paper inadequate and confused thinking. Our use of style refers to a pervasive qual ity in the behavior of an individual, a quality that persists though the content may change. To illus trate first from areas outside of education, Presi dent Carter has a speaking quite distinct and different from ex-presidents Kennedy, John son, or Truman. Each of them, in turn, had a dis tinctive of his own, identifiable regardless of the changing content of his speeches. Similarily, the of Van Gogh was pervasive and different from Gauguin or Cezanne; the of Goolagong differs from that of Wade, King, or Navratilova. In short, in every field of endeavor, people can be identified with distinctive qualities of behavior that are consistent through time and carry over from situation to situation. So it is in education, both in teaching and in learning. Style is not to be identified with method, for people will infuse different methods with their own styles. For example, lecturing is not a style, in our conception, for people with distinctive styles will infuse their respective lectures with their own unique qualities. Thus, even when lec-