VARK Questionnaire
From the VARK questionnaire, I have realized that my preferred learning style or preference is strong kinesthetic. A strong kinesthetic kind of learning style involves the utilization of touch, demonstrations, practical experiences, case studies, and real things, examples. From the summary of the answers keyed in the questionnaire, I had a score of one on visual, four on visual aural, three on reading and write and a score of eight on kinesthetic. According to Baltulionis et al. (2019), kinesthetic learners prefer doing things with a team, more applications rather than theories, documentaries and autobiographies, completing a task and having value for the experiences. To benefit more from the learning style, there is a need to use most of the senses, utilize and read case studies, exhibits, photographs, and samples. And be involved in all practical laboratory sessions. In this kind of learning preference, understanding is aided through actions, and learning is mainly through trial and error, use of interviews and surveys, among others. To remit information to others in this kind of learning style, the focus is put on the reality, the teacher or the person should use more examples and use previous experiences.
Describe Your Preferred Learning Strategies
My learning strategies relate to the identified strategies from the learning style highlighted by the VARK questionnaire. I always prefer observing various videos, activities or sessions for me to learn effectively. I also always appreciate the value that pictures, case studies and real-life experiences add to my learning strategies. Most of the times, I like engaging in active listening in combination with a demonstration to achieve higher performance. After a demonstration or observing an activity, I always prefer to go back and practice it on my own, if difficulties arise I always consult a specific person and not various people to avoid confusion due to different conflicting ideas and opinions.
How Individual Learning Styles affect the Degree of Understanding
Various individuals always adopt different styles of learning which they believe will lead to sufficient understanding and performance in educational activities. For example, if a kinesthetic kind of learners gets an opportunity where more of the teaching involves demonstration and use of real-life experiences, then there is a high likelihood that he or she will understand and perform high in most of the educational activities. Alternatively, when a person who doesn’t prefer learning through demonstrations is brought into such a setting, he or she will have difficulties in understanding, and this will affect the performance in various educational activities. For this reason, it’s always advised that educators or teachers involve more than one teaching style or strategy to accommodate the various learning styles of the students, this will ensure that the performances and understanding of the learners are continuous and takes a standard curve, as in Vizeshfar & Torabizadeh (2018).
Importance of an Educator Identifying Individual Learning Styles
An educator should be able to develop the skill of identifying the learning styles of all the learners in a situation, for example, in a health education scenario. Identification of the learning styles will allow the educator to amass various resources, learning styles and strategies that will ensure that there is an adequate understanding of the information being passed by all. If the educator doesn’t appreciate the differences in learning style, one cohort of the learning will be favoured to the other (Vizeshfar & Torabizadeh, 2018). This will lead to disparities in understanding and performances, not because of the student but due to the unskilled nature of the educator not to accommodate all learning styles of the various learners. An educator that identifies the preferences of the learners is more likely to have a good cohesion with the learners and achieve the learning outcomes effectively (Gonzales et al., 2017).
Learning Styles of Individuals Participating in Health Promotion
In a health promotion plan occurring in the community or a hospital setting, various people prefer different kinds of learning. This is a factor that must be taken into consideration during health promotion. Taking into account the learning styles of the individuals ensures that a person plans the health promotion to involve demonstrations, examples listening and explanation. For instance, a health promotion plan involving family planning, the educator can utilize pictures and videos to explain the importance of family planning. This accommodates various learning styles and ensures that the learners can relate the images to what is happening in real life. This can ensure that there is an achievement of the learning outcomes. On the other hand, an educator that doesn’t care about the differences in learning styles can lead to the adoption of poor health behaviour among the health promotion participants since they are not able to understand what was being discussed (Whitehead, 2018).
According to Arnold (2019), those who understand the message being passed will appropriately adopt the right behaviour and improve their health. In health promotion, there are three key components, which is communication, decision making and behaviour change. For effective communication to occur, the educator must use various learning styles for purposes of accommodation all the learners, and effective communication will the enhance decision making in the individual and hence and adoption of healthy behaviour. An educator can involve different learning styles in health promotion by using various communication media, using demonstrations, encouraging return demonstration, learning through the use of others that understand the topic well among other strategies.
References
Arnold, E. C. (2019). Communication Strategies for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Interpersonal Relationships E-Book: Professional Communication Skills for Nurses, 262.
Baltulionis, S., Turenko, V., Vasiljevas, M., Damaševičius, R., & Sidekerskienė, T. (2019). Validation of VARK questionnaire using gaze tracking data.
Gonzales, L. K., Glaser, D., Howland, L., Clark, M. J., Hutchins, S., Macauley, K., … & Ward, J. (2017). Assessing learning styles of graduate entry nursing students as a classroom research activity: a quantitative research study. Nurse education today, 48, 55-61.
Vizeshfar, F., & Torabizadeh, C. (2018). The effect of teaching based on dominant learning style on nursing students’ academic achievement. Nurse education in practice, 28, 103-108.
Whitehead, D. (2018). Exploring health promotion and health education in nursing. Nursing Standard, 33(8).