Traditionally,
schools are brimming with words; lessons are delivered sequentially, and
information is layered on one brick at a time. Education's verbal-sequential
orientation originated during industrial age - when uniformity and efficiency
were of the highest value.
Now,
originality and creativity are at a premium. Education is poised
to make its greatest shift in generations. As we move away from extensive lecture and whole-class textbooks to more personalized and authentic work, there is one group of
historically under-served learners who will greatly benefit: the rare and
remarkable visual-spatial learner.
Visual-spatial thinkers learn by doing - by
building, by experimenting, by manipulating, and by creating. They are systems
thinkers who can, according to expert Dr. Linda Keger Silverman, “…orchestrate
large amounts of information from different domains, but they often miss the
details.” They don’t learn step-by-step, and they don't learn through rote
exercises and repetition. Ironically, as these students begin to struggle, the
first intervention is often to provide more rote practice and to break ideas
down into even smaller and smaller pieces.
The visual-spatial learner's exceptional
perceptual reasoning skills are often remarkably disparate from their verbal
reasoning skills. This disparity, along with poor organizational and
time-management skills, can lead to significant underachievement. Because much of school
targets their weaknesses, visual-spatial learners can disengage, lose heart,
and even drop out. Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison knew a thing or two about
this.
So what can we do about it? We can target the
visual-spatial thinker's STRENGTHS and then use that success to breed more.
Like a car that needs gas for a long trip ahead, so too do visual/spatial
learners. By providing learning experiences where they EXCELL and LEAD, we are
filling their hearts and minds (and tanks!) with self-efficacy, hope, and
ambition. How do we do this?- Design performance tasks which pose big-picture challenges
- Provide students with learning opportunities that will inspire and develop their natural talents (coding, engineering projects, visual arts, Lego League)
- Use the “hardest problem first” strategy, as visual-spatial learners generally do better with complexity than rote
- Provide academic choice so that
students can tailor learning experiences to their own strengths and
interests
Teaching visual-spatial learners, and developing all students' 21st Century Skills, requires us to
let go. When we do so, we allow understanding to grow along non-linear paths. It is messy,
and it is so worth it.
