Employees are often subject to learning new strategies and abilities to facilitate their progress within an organisation. Those teaching employees must account for individual differences in learning styles and the impact of learning experiences. Learning styles are a preference for one particular method of learning over another, and have important implications for the outcome of organisational learning. A theoretical exploration by Eugene Sadler-Smith (1996) emphasises the importance in recognising these differences to facilitate a more productive training program.
The process of learning encompasses the individual’s reaction to the material, the acquisition of new skills or knowledge, the ability to apply these to a given work context, and the overall effect on organisational performance. This is influenced by the experience, education, motivation, and self-concept of the learner, resulting in a range of learning needs that must be acknowledged to enhance learning and aid organisational progress. These form the basis of one’s personal learning style, incorporating their individual preferences for instruction, information-processing, and cognitive personality elements.
Preferences for instruction are readily expressed and observed, and the distinct styles or types identified are based in either dependent, collaborative, or autonomous methods. Dependent methods require the input and instruction of experienced people from within the field, whereas collaborative methods encompass group learning situations, and autonomous methods require individual responsibility for one’s own learning. The use of personalised approaches to learning or a balanced approach incorporating a variety of learning preferences are valuable tools to accommodate individual differences within a given group.
Information-processing styles define the manner of acquisition of new knowledge, skills or attitudes through training and/or experience. This relies on concrete experience, reflections of the experience, abstract concept formulation based on the experience, and the generalisation of these concepts to new situations. Within this are four general categories: activists (seeking new experiences and brainstorming to tackle problems); reflectors (engaging in a period of observation and reflection before making a decision); theorists (analysing and objectively integrating their observations); and pragmatists (applying new ideas immediately without reflection). Effective learners have abilities characteristic of all these styles, but most people prefer one style, and it is therefore important to develop all of these stages to enhance the learning process.
Cognitive styles are habitual methods of organising and processing information, and these can be described in terms of two principal dimensions: the wholist vs. analytical dimension describes the processing of information; and the verbaliser vs. imager dimension describes how information is represented in memory. Where the wholist views a topic globally, the analytic focuses their attention on smaller component parts. Similarly, the verbaliser represents information internally as words, whereas the imager represents information in pictures. These dimensions have important implications as to the most appropriate method of presenting the information to be learned.
Sadler-Smith’s review described above emphasises the importance of acknowledging individual differences in learning styles within the organisations. Managers and trainers are therefore encouraged to understand and identify these styles before training employees. By incorporating training methods that accommodate various learning styles, the organisation allows and facilitates a greater diversity of talent and organisational progress.
Taken from: Sadler-Smith, E. (1996). Learning styles: a holistic approach. Journal of European Industrial Training, 20, 29-36.
