There are lots of theories of learning styles out there; in 1984 David Kolb put forward the Converger/Diverger vs Assimilator/Accomodator model, in 1992 Peter Honey and Alan Mumford put forward their Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist theory and also in 1992, Neil Fleming proposed the VAK/VARK technique which was derived from neurolinguistic programming. These all have their place, but the look at how learning has taken place and omit the missed learning opportunities.
However, the learning theory which comes closest to the theories surrounding atomisation was first put forward by Gordon Pask and Bernard Scott in their 1972 called "Learning strategies and individual competence". Pask, a cyberneticist, and Scott, a Ph.D. student, and were seeking to define how learning takes place. They divided learners into serialist (those who need the detail first) and holists (those who need an overview). This makes a lot of sense, but I was wondering if it could be extended to include the description of the processes taking place? Are these external vs internal learners, and if so, which extra attributes do these endow their owners?
How many of those of us who teach have wondered how some of our students managed to get on the right bus this morning because they are having real trouble with something as simple as ... (insert your own topic) and you can't get much simpler than that? You ask them a simple question or get them to do a basic activity and they are lost! On the other hand, little Gee Whizz there can recite it all and play it backwards, so I must have made it understandable. It can't be me, the teacher. It must be that the standard of student has dropped. What do they teach them nowadays?
Yet when the end-of-year test comes round Gee Whizz scores in the middle of the class and Bus Dodger comes ahead. How did that happen? Was there cheating involved?
In fact, the answer may be simpler than that. It maybe that Bus Dodger is an internaliser whilst Gee Whizz is an externaliser.
I am putting forward the theory that there are another two learning styles that not only explain this apparent anomaly, but also explains why some appear to do badly and don't achieve. Internalisers need to understand a new concept and have it filed in their own way to be able to use it … and that takes time since it needs to go into long term memory. Externalisers, on the other hand, take what they are given and store it in short term memory.
Ask an internaliser to demonstrate understanding in class and you will see a less bright student. Force this student to produce something and you will get poor results - the internalisation process has not started yet because it takes longer to get sorted in long term memory. The obvious thing to do is to move the student to a lower set, one in which they are more able to cope (please, hear the sarcasm in my writing).
This then leads to other problems for the internalising student. They have now assimilated this material, so they are getting bored in the lower set. This will lead to "day dreaming" in class or misbehaviour - both signs that the student is not coping. I'm continually amazed by the number of top degree-level students who failed to perform at school.
Externalisers get good A'Levels, but perform less well on degrees because they rely more on learning than understanding. Pask and Scott theorised that some subjects are might lend themselves more to one learning style, for example, mathematics being more suitable for serialists and music more for holists. However, nothing in this area is as it seems. People who tend towards a holist approach to learning seem to need to slot detail into place - they need to internalise their learning. On the other hand, serialists need the detail to make the picture and so they externalise the detail. Serialist are exasperated by jumping around since they prefer a more ordered approach. Holists, on the other hand, feel more at home with topic based subjects.
None of us are entirely one learning style or the other. It is a case of mix-and-match depending on the situation. It is more a continuum where one learning style blends into the other as in the diagram below:-
The term "intelligence" is a proxy for all the intelligences (Gardner 1999: 41-43) we might have and the blend may be different for each intelligence. In the same way, the external/internal approach could only be applied to each intelligence separately.
Externalisers must have excellent short-term memory and then process the information into longer term storage. These externalisers then use the short-term memory to answer those tricky "hands up who knows ..." questions and score well in the test on the subject the next day. However, come the end of year exam, they will score less well than their equal internalisers.
Internalisers may be less endowed with short-term memory and sit on their hands when the class is asked a question but process the information into longer term memory more efficiently. Then come the end of year test and they pop up out of nowhere.
But here is the rub - internalisers are given the impression that they are less able so they become demotivated and perform less well than they could. A change in the way we teach might well bring them back into the fold. How many times have we heard, "Oh, she/he didn't do well at school, but look at her/him now!".