September 28, 2011
Three Modes of Doing
In the five short weeks I've been teaching my class at Parsons I've already identified the different types of learners in my class.
From my perspective in the front of the room it’s endlessly fascinating to watch each student react to the material I present. Some students quickly grasp abstract concepts while others are delighted by the challenge of thinking and making tangible, concrete artifacts.
Now that we’ve had a few small critiques those differences have become even clearer. This morning I came across a psychology article titled “Classroom Styles” that presents a relevant framework for thinking about students’ abilities.
My own thinking about styles of learning and thinking has been driven by my “theory of mental self-government,” which I first presented in book format in a volume entitled Thinking Styles. According to this theory, the ways of governments in the world are external reflections of what goes on in people’s minds. There are 13 different styles in the theory, but consider now just three of them. People with a legislative style like to come up with their own ideas and to do things in their own way; people with an executive style prefer to be given more structure and guidance or even told what to do; people with a judicial style like to evaluate and judge things and especially the work of others.
I assigned a group project for the first milestone in my class. I decided to curate each group myself instead of selecting students at random. (A few grad school projects gone awry have taught me the dangers of haphazard pairings!) I categorized each person in my class into one strength: Leader, Doer, or Organizer. After each student was categorized I used my knowledge of their personalities to match the right Leaders, Doers and Organizers with each other.
At the end of the three week project it was clear that the roles I had laid out in my own spreadsheet were reflected in the work that was done. I was delighted to find Sternberg’s approach to be analogous to my own: Leader = Judicial, Doer = Legislative, and Organizer = Executive. I would love to read the rest of his book, Thinking Styles.
There are a lot of other great insights in his article, including a set of problems and methodologies for addressing a variety of classroom learners.
Check it out: Classroom Styles, by Robert J. Sternberg.