[SENco-forum] Primary Review and VAK

Multi-sensory learning is important for blind dyslexic learners, and please don't believe all you hear about blind folk compensating for loss of sight with super hearing etc - the kinaesthetic and tactual pathways are really important.
  Alice
  QTVI

SEN at tringham.net wrote:
  While it may be ideal to activate all 5 regions simultaneously and maybe
those who are firing on all cylinders do just this to be the best
scientist/thinker of their day, but it is not something that is available to
all.

My blind friend has no sight at all and has been this way from birth and yet
he has no difficulty in understanding science or scientific principles.
Perhaps with sight he would have been the greatest scientist ever - who
knows.

My daughter has dyslexia. As for text she may as well have been blind in
the early days. Her inner wiring or multisensory networks, while in place
were definitely not working. Again her grasp of science is fine.

Helen Keller was missing both sight and sound and yet communication or
understanding was well within her grasp. Admittedly these 3 had access to a
high level of specialist support (whether working with or without scientific
research to back them) and this support was directed at making the most of
their other senses and that is what VAK is supposed draw attention to -
other ways of learning that make learning more successful. I can definitely
say that these would not have picked visual as their preferred method.

While researchers come up with a lot that is good, I do sometimes wish that
they would stop training spiders to go left or right on command, then rip
off their legs and declare the spiders to be deaf when they can no longer
move.

VAK is one model and not the be all and end all to learning. It has some
value in showing teachers there are other ways of teaching than to stand at
the front and talk . Of course you could learn if closeted in a dark box
with a sound track running , but I cannot imagine it would be ideal for the
majority, nor would anyone want to claim that this is what is meant by
auditory learning. However there is a place for blocking out some
distractions, or indeed, building some in like fidgeting or chewing if some
find it helpful. Auditory is not my preferred method of learning (being
'kinaesthetic'), but it was ideal last thing at night to listen to a tape
recorder in the dark when revising for my exams.

Sharon

-----Original Message-----
From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk]On Behalf Of Mary Kelly
Sent: 10 February 2008 16:37
To: 'Becta Senco'
Subject: [senco-forum] Primary Review and VAK

Here's a little more flesh on the ideas I paraphrased earlier - from the
Conclusions section (p20) of Goswami, U. and Bryant, P. (2007) 'Children's
Cognitive Development and Learning' (Primary Review Research Survey 2/1a),
Cambridge: University of Cambridge Faculty of Education:
"Learning by the brain depends on the development of multi-sensory networks
of neurons distributed across the entire brain. For example, a concept in
science may depend upon neurons being simultaneously active in visual,
spatial, memory, deductive and kinaesthetic regions, in both brain
hemispheres. Ideas such as left-brain/right-brain learning, or unisensory
'learning styles' (visual, auditory OR kinaesthetic) are NOT supported by
the brain science of learning."

Mary

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