written by Nancy DeFrates-Densch of Northern Illinois University

The Workshops

Mr. Washington and his colleague Ms. Kaufman had just attended a workshop on adapting instruction to children's learning styles. Ms. Jacobson and her colleague Mr. Adams had just attended a workshop on adapting instruction to cover Gardner's eight intelligences. (Check out Multiple Intelligences.) The four met in the teachers' workroom and were discussing what they had learned.

"Well," said Mr. Washington, "this certainly explains why some students seem to want to sit and listen to me talk, while others like to be more actively involved. Joe's obviously an executive type. He likes lectures. Martha, on the other hand, must be legislative. She just loves to work on projects and can't stand it when I tell her how to do things."

"No, I don't think so," Ms. Jacobson replied. "I think Joe's high in verbal intelligence. That's why he can make sense out of your lectures. He writes well, too. Martha likes to do things with her hands. She's higher in spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence."

Mr. Washington responded, "No, no, no. Learning styles explain their differences much better. Here look at this."

At that point, Mr. Washington showed Ms. Jacobson the handouts from the workshop he and Ms. Kaufman had attended. Mr. Adams got out the handouts from the workshop he and Ms. Jacobson had attended as well. They began comparing notes. All four of them recognized students in each of the schemes in the handouts. In fact, they could recognize the same student in both sets of handouts.

Just then Mrs. Peterson and Mrs. Darby walked into the room. They were very excited about a graduate class they were taking at a nearby university.

Mrs. Peterson said, "You know, I never thought about personality when considering teaching methods. It's no wonder Martha doesn't behave terribly well in my class. She's just too impulsive for the kind of structure I have."

Ms. Jacobson was dismayed. "You mean they're telling you we have to adapt our classrooms to the students' personalities now, too?!" she asked.

Mr. Adams also was upset. "Gosh," he said, "just when I thought I had it all figured out. Used to be we just had to consider IQ. Now all this. We have 25 kids in our classes. How can we possibly adapt to all these differences? What are we supposed to do, have 25 different lesson plans? Maybe we should do some kind of profile on them and then group them by profile. What do you think, guys?"

1		What are the issues in this case?
2		To what extent should teachers adapt their instruction to the strengths, learning styles, and personalities of their students? Why? (Check out "Tapping into Multiple Intelligences".)
3		What will you do in your classroom to accommodate individual differences such as students' strengths, learning styles, and personalities?
4		What other individual differences do you think you might have to accommodate? How will you do this?