Discovering How

You Learn
Unit 4
Part 2

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 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
 One of the best-known and most widely used personality inventories that can also be used
to describe learning styles is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI. While the VARK
measures your preferences for using your senses to learn and the Kolb Inventory focuses
on learning abilities, the MBTI investigates basic personality characteristics and how
those relate to human interaction and learning.

 All the psychological types described by the MBTI are normal and healthy; there is no
good or bad or right or wrong—people are simply different. When you complete the
Myers-Briggs survey instrument, your score represents your “psychological type”—the
combination of your preferences on four different scales. These scales measure how you
take in information and how you then make decisions or come to conclusions about that
information.
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 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
1. Extraversion (E) Versus Introversion (I): ( The Inner or Outer World)

The E-I preference indicates whether you direct your energy and attention primarily
toward the outer world of people, events, and things or the inner world of thoughts,
feelings, and reflections.

• Extraverts tend to be outgoing, gregarious, and talkative. They are people of action;
they like to spend more time doing things than thinking about them.

• Introverts prefer to reflect carefully and think things through before taking action.
They are refreshed by quiet and privacy.

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 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
2. Sensing (S) Versus Intuition (N):

• The S-N preference indicates how you perceive the world and take in information: directly,
through your five senses, or indirectly, by using your intuition.

• Sensing types are interested above all in the facts, what is known and what they can be sure
of. Typically sensing types are practical, factual, realistic, and down-to-earth.

• Intuitive types are fascinated by possibilities—not so much the facts themselves, but what
those facts mean, what concepts might describe those facts, how those might relate to other
concepts, and what the implications of the facts would be.

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 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

3- Thinking Versus Feeling:

The T-F preference indicates how you prefer to make your decisions:
through logical, rational analysis or through your subjective values, likes,
and dislikes.

• Thinking types are usually logical, rational, analytical, and critical.

• Feeling types are typically warm, empathic, sympathetic, and interested in

the happiness of others as well as themselves.

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 The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
44. Judging (J) Versus Perceiving (P): Organization or Adaptability

The J-P preference indicates how you characteristically approach the outside world:
by making decisions and judgments or by observing and perceiving instead.

• Judging types approach the world in a planned, orderly, organized way; they try
to order and control their part of it as much as possible.

• Perceiving types don’t try to control their world as much as adapt to it. Theirs is a
flexible, wait-and-see approach.

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 How to Use Your Strongest- and Weakest- Preferences
• Because there are two possible choices for each of four different preferences, there are
sixteen possible psychological types. No matter what your Myers- Briggs type, all
components of personality have value in the learning process. The key to success in college,
therefore, is to use all of the attitudes and functions (E, I, S, N, T, F, J, and P) in their most
positive sense. As you go about your studies, here is a system we recommend:
1. Sensing: Get the facts. Use sensing to find and learn the facts. How do we know facts when
we see them? What is the evidence for what is being said?
2. Intuition: Get the ideas. Now use intuition to consider what those facts mean. Why are
those facts being presented? What concepts and ideas are being supported by those facts?
What are the implications? What is the big picture?
3. Thinking: Critically analyze. Use thinking to analyze the pros and cons of what is being
presented. Are there gaps in the evidence? What more do we need to know? Do the facts
really support the conclusions? Are there alternative explanations? How well does what is
presented hang together logically? How could our knowledge of it be improved?

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 How to Use Your Strongest- and Weakest-
Preferences
4. Feeling: Make informed value judgments. Why is this material important? What does it
contribute to people’s good? Why might it be important to you personally? What is your
personal opinion about it?
5. Introversion: Think it through. Before you take any action, carefully review everything you
have encountered so far.
6. Judging: Organize and plan. Don’t just dive in! Now is the time to organize and plan your
studying so you will learn and remember everything you need to. Don’t just plan in your head
either; write your plan down, in detail.
7. Extraversion: Take action. Now that you have a plan, act on it. Do whatever it takes. Create
note cards, study outlines, study groups, and so on. If you are working on a paper, now is the
time to start writing.
8. Perceiving: Change your plan as needed. Be flexible enough to change something that isn’t
working. Expect the unexpected, and deal with the unforeseen. Don’t give up the whole effort
the minute your original plan stops working. Figure out what’s wrong, and come up with
another, better plan and start following that.
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 Multiple Intelligences

• Another way of measuring how we learn is the theory of multiple

intelligences, developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner
• Gardner argues that students should be encouraged to develop the
abilities they have and that evaluation should measure all forms of
intelligence, not just linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence.

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Multiple Intelligences

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Multiple Intelligences

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 When Learning Styles and Teaching Styles Conflict

• When you recognize a mismatch between how you best learn and how you are
being taught, it is important that you take control of your learning process.

• Don’t depend on the instructor or the classroom environment to give you

everything you need to maximize your learning. Employ your own preferences,
talents, and abilities to develop different ways to study and retain information.

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 Learning with Disabilities
• Learning disabilities are usually recognized and diagnosed in grade school, but some
students can successfully compensate for a learning problem, perhaps without
realizing that’s what it is, and reach college without having been properly diagnosed or
assisted.
• Learning disabilities affect people’s ability to interpret what they see and hear or to
link information across different parts of the brain.
• These limitations can show up as specific difficulties with spoken and written
language, coordination, self-control, or attention. Such difficulties can impede learning
to read, write, or do math.
• The term “learning disability” covers a broad range of possible causes, symptoms,
treatments, and outcomes. Because of this, it is difficult to diagnose a learning
disability or pinpoint the causes. The types of learning disabilities that most commonly
affect college students are attention disorders and disorders that affect the development
of academic skills including reading, writing, and mathematics.
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 Learning with Disabilities
1- Attention Disorders are common in children, adolescents, and adults. Some
students who have attention disorders appear to daydream excessively, and once
you get their attention, they can be easily distracted.

2- Cognitive Learning Disabilities Other learning disabilities are related to

cognitive skills. Dyslexia, for example, is a common developmental reading
disorder. Also, people with writing disabilities, particularly expressive language
disorders (the inability to express oneself using accurate language or sentence
structure), are often unable to compose complete, grammatical sentences.
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Learning with Disabilities

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Thank you

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