Learning styles are simply different approaches or ways of learning. Keep in mind that children may exhibit more than one learning style. Thus, a developmentally appropriate curriculum should include a wide range of teaching strategies and approaches to meet the different learning styles found in the classroom.
Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory, by Howard Gardner, is one theory on learning styles. It states that there are at least seven different ways of learning anything, and therefore there are “seven intelligences”: body/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intra-personal, logical/mathematical, musical/rhythmic, verbal/linguistic and visual/spatial. Recently, and eighth learning style has been added, naturalistic, but is not recognized by all. In addition most all people have the ability to develop skills in each of the intelligences, and to learn through them. However, in education we have tended to emphasize two of “the ways of learning”: logical/mathematical and verbal/linguistic. Click here to see brief descriptions about Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.