What is Your Child’s Emotional Learning Style ?

What role does your child’s emotional learning style play in your child’s learning?

We all have different personalities. What we like and dislike affects everything we do including learning and teaching. IF your child’s emotional needs for learning match your needs, you’ll be all set. However, you may need to think about your child’s needs to help your child learn effectively.

There are five parts to a child’s emotional learning style. Look at each of the pieces to see what your child’s emotional learning style might be.

Emotional Learning Style : Level of Motivation – This is your child’s ability to work independently, in a self-driven manner, towards a desired goal or outcome. Some kids are highly motivated to complete their schoolwork, almost to a point of being ‘driven’. Other children are not internally motivated to complete tasks on their own at any level. Your child’s internal level of motivation may require incentives if your child’s individual motivation level is low. Interest may be lifted through unit studies your child chooses too, especially when they are in an area of high interest.

Emotional Learning Style : Persistence – Your child’s ability to continuously engage in an activity until it is completed or correct is persistence. Learners with low levels of persistence will “give up” quickly if they are not successful in completing a task. Other learners persist to a point of obsession to complete tasks or to complete them perfectly. The higher your child’s level of persistence is, the more willing he will be to work on a learning task until it is mastered. Persistence can be encouraged with motivational tools. Lots of positive recognition for any degree of progress can encourage persistence too.

Emotional Learning Style : Responsibility – The Hyperdictionary defines this as: a form of trustworthiness; the trait of being answerable to someone for something or being responsible for one’s conduct. For a learner, this would be the learner’s ability to take control of and follow through on his own learning tasks.

Responsibility levels can be nurtured through incremental increases in independent learning activities until your child is capable of taking responsibility for all of his learning tasks.

Emotional Learning Style : Conformity / Non-conformity – Your child’s willingness to act within expected boundaries or guidelines. As the teacher, you establish learning activities for your child to engage in. Whether or not your child is willing to operate within the guidelines you set is the level of conformity your child has. Children who are motivated to complete assignments rapidly may be non-conformists if they do not finish assignments to a reasonable level of acceptability.

Conformity can be encouraged through motivational tools, encouragement, and clear expectations with logical consequences. Conformity can also be strengthened by pursuing topics of interest to your child.

Emotional Learning Style : Need for Structure – Your child’s need for organization and predictability on a daily basis are aspects of structure. Some children like highly structured learning. They are helped by daily checklists for assignments and consistency in the time and location for learning. They also like predictability in how their learning tasks will be done.

Learners with a low-structure needs flourish in a spontaneous learning environment. They may become ‘bored’ with learning in the same place, in the same way, day after day. Establishing a level of structure that your child likes can help your child to engage in learning activities more easily. The key is to match the room your child learns in to your child’s needs.

If you’d like to evaluate your child’s emotional learning style, visit learningstyles.net to have your child take the full assessment.