Learning Styles

Participants:

John Shield, Principal of Witchford College

David Smith, co-ordinator of Learn in Style.

David Smith, our co-ordinator on visit to Iceland April 2005.

John Shield, principal of Witchford College, and former co-ordinator of Learn In Style.

Witchford Village College is beautifully located on the edge of Grunty Fen within view of Ely's landmark Cathedral. Sustaining the educational needs of only 850 students of 11-16 years, WVC takes pride in its ethos - that of a smaller, well focussed, rural community in which every member is valued. For this reason Witchford is increasingly popular as a school of choice by parents both local and from further afield.

Witchford is known for offering a strong academic challenge to all. Individual achievement is the goal for every learner at WVC, whatever this may constitute. Witchford always works in a context of support for the individual.

"At Witchford we understand that happy students make the best learners. We set out determinedly to find the best in young people, looking to make successful young adults no matter what their skills. Above all we are a community which identifies with the quality of learning for life and it is this which makes Witchford special."

John Shield, Principal since 2001

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Iceland
http://www.fa.is

Participants:

Dóra Ósk Halldórsdóttir

Kristen Mary Swenson

Hannes Ísberg Ólafsson

Sölvi Sveinsson former principal of FÁ, currently principal of The Commericial College of Iceland.

Kristen and Dóra in Portugal November 2003.

Description of school:

The Comprehensive College at Ármúli is located in the capital of Reykjavík. It has a diverse student body of approximately 1000 students per term, with many former dropout students as well as students who have completed compulsory education but achieved low scores on our national standardized tests. Nevertheless, there are high achievers as well. In addition, the Medical School increases the average age of the student body, but students from that line have compulsory courses with the main student body. The school has the highest rate of dyslexic students in the capital of Reykjavik and this is probably due to the fact that the school offers a special program for dyslexic students. Furthermore, the number of immigrant students is constantly increasing. These students come from a diverse ethnic background, and the school offers a program to facilitate their integration into the main-stream student body. The Icelandic school has had an innovative and a leading role in incorporating IT into the teaching environment. Fjolbrautaskolinn vid Armula is also a leading school in distance learning, a relatively new program that now has over 1000 students per term, in addition to the regular day course students. Framvegis, the centre for Lifelong Learning which is affiliated with The Comprehensive College at Ármúli, is one of the leaders in Iceland when it comes to offering a variety of educational opportunities to lifelong learners. Because of the diversity of the student body and the relatively high number of former dropouts, and low achievers, the school provides an ideal environment for this kind of a project.

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Italy:
Italy: www.liceistefanini.it

TEACHERS AND STAFF

Antonella Antonelli, project leader and teacher of English of target group, years 2002-2003, 2003-2004

Annalisa Fiorini project leader and teacher of English of target group, year 2004-2005

Leonardo Mezzaroba, teacher of Italian & Latin of target group

Alessandra Pozzi, deputy headteacher

Sandra Carraro, principal

Gabriella Renier, school office

Manuela Folin, school office

STUDENTS

The 25 year-3 students of the foreign languages course of studies

From left to right: Antonella, Alessandra, Leonardo and Anabela (from Portugal). Venice March 2004.

Description:

Istituto "L. Stefanini" is located in an urban area, at a short distance from the centre of Mestre, on the Venetian mainland.
The students of the school come both from the town of Mestre and from villages of the surrounding countryside.
The school offers four different syllabuses, aiming to care and cater to the students’ different orientations to learning. Thus, far from suffering from a high dropout rate, Stefanini often provides a welcoming environment for students who drop out of other schools.
Our main objective is to practice a personalised way of teaching, which implies care for each individual who comes into the classroom with a set of developed intelligences, each showing his/her own unique set of intellectual strengths and weaknesses, in a word, a different learning style, as well as awareness that successful learning happens when a balance is reached between potential and results achieved in order to avoid loss of motivation and drop-out.

Consistently with its role as an experimental institution, and although it has never participated in EU-funded international projects, our school has always been very keen to share experiences and best practice with as many partner institutions as possible.
Being part of the Comenius LEARN IN STYLE project is therefore consistent with the school policy so far, as once we are aware of the existence of different learning styles we can improve the quality of teaching and concentrate on learners allowing them to employ their favourite ways of processing and communicating information.

Antonella Antonelli

Venezia-Mestre, Italy

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Portugal

www.esec-cerco.rcts.pt.
Teachers Participants: João Vieira Gomes.

Anabela Malheiro.

Maria Helena Garcia.

Ivone Ribeiro.

Paula Abrantes.

Helena Maria Correia.

Porto, November 2003. From left to right: Maria Helena Garcia, Ivone Ribeiro, Anabela Malheiro, Helena Maria Correia and João Vieira Gomes.

Escola Secundária com 3º Ciclo do Cerco is located in one of the most socially, economically and culturally deprived areas of Porto, Portugal. A great number of its inhabitants have precarious jobs and poor housing.

The students of the school show some difficulties at various levels:

Social behaviour and attitudes to education

Lack of life and career futures

Incoherent or low job expectations

Poor parent involvement

Drop-out risk.

The School has been working to develop better learning and teaching conditions as well as offering different education possibilities such as professional courses in an effort to assure rewarding and successful school results while preventing drop-outs.

The ‘Learn In Style’ project sets out to discover an alternative way by which we may achieve these goals by finding new motivation in teachers to pursue in-job training and encourage a better knowledge of themselves and the students. Sharing best practice with other European partner countries is an intrinsic aspect of our joint intent. Our research to date has enquired into what concerns the students; enhancing an understanding of their own characteristics as learners and an effort to discover how teachers may best respond to the learning styles of students. The thesis is that teachers can learn how to teach differently, having identified their own preferred learning style and so give attention to students’ learning preferences. We are, as a Comenius Group, looking to find a way for our students to learn better and allow their self-esteem grow.
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