Emotional Learning Style: How to Let Feelings Help Learning
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 in order to see what your child’s emotional learning style might be.
Level of Motivation
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 have high motivation 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.
Persistence
Emotional Learning Style : Persistence – Your child’s ability to continuously engage in an activity until it is complete 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 is to work on a learning task until he masters it. Persistence is encouraged with motivational tools. Give lots of positive recognition for any degree of progress so that you can encourage persistence.
Responsibility
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.
Conformity / Non-conformity
Emotional Learning Style : Conformity / Non-conformity – Conformity is your child’s willingness to act within expected boundaries or guidelines. As the teacher, you establish learning activities for your child. Whether or not your child is willing to operate within the guidelines you set indicates their level of conformity. Children with high motivation to complete assignments rapidly may really be non-conformists if they do not finish assignments with a reasonable level of acceptability. In other words, if they rush through their work with no real effort, then they’re not conforming to the assignment’s goals.
You can encourage conformity through motivational tools, encouragement, and clear expectations with logical consequences. Conformity also strengthens when you pursue topics of interest to your child.
Need for Structure
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, so they perform better when things are organized. Daily checklists for assignments helps structure lovers as does staying consistent 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.
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