Learning Styles

I've been working on this teaching module at work, and its got me thinking about how people learn things. A's piano teacher once said that when she is learning something new, she has to see the big picture, and how the specific piece she is working on fits in, before she can take in the information. 

I'm the opposite. I'll take some basic outline of the big picture, but I really learn by taking random pieces and working with them until I start to see how they fit together. If someone gives me the whole pictures, all neatly laid out, I can't really take it in. The process of struggling with the pieces and figuring out for myself how they fit together seems to be central to the acquisition of the information. Otherwise, it just doesn't stick. I've been wondering lately if this is because I don't have a great memory, but I have good analytic skills. I can't remember information if someone just tells it to me strait out, but if I have to spend some time trying to figure it out, then I have a much better chance of remembering the details that I pick up along the way.

I'm trying to watch my kids and see if I can figure out if that are parts-to-whole people (like me) or whole-to-parts people (like A's piano teacher). I can't really tell. At this point in their lives, it seems like they are more into basic physical skills and facts acquisition, without a lot of actively trying to figure out abstract things. They have much better memories than I do (fortunately), and I think are generally more balanced than I am in the way their brains work. I'm great at some things and really awful at some things, but they seem to be more consistent across cognitive skills. I have a very even temperament, but a rather uneven brain, now that I think about it.

I love to identify dimensions along which people differ, and I guess most people are probably somewhere in the middle on this dimension, just like others, so I shouldn't rush to try to categorize people at one end or the other. But, it is worth keeping my eyes open to how my kids learn, so we can figure out what works best for them. It is useful to have some insight into how you learn.