Kinesthetic learning

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Kinesthetic learning is a teaching and learning style in which learning takes place by the student actually carrying out a physical activity, rather than listening to a lecture or merely watching a demonstration. Students associated with this predominant learning style are thought to be natural discovery learners; they have realizations through doing, as opposed to having thought first before initiating action. There is no evidence of the efficacy of kinesthetic learning ^[1].

1 Features of kinesthetic learners
2 Applications
3 Differentiated Thinking Styles
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Features of kinesthetic learners

Kinesthetic learners may be restless or hyperactive when feeling under-stimulated in educational settings reliant on visual or verbal learning styles. Without movement they may struggle to maintain attention and so may be more susceptible to diagnoses such as ADD or ADHD, but this is not necessarily the case.^[2] Kinesthetic learners (unless they also have a movement or motor planning disorder such as dyspraxia) may have a highly developed sense of balance, timing and body movement and perform well in physical and manual tasks.^{[citation needed]} Examples of kinesthetic learning include building dioramas, physical models or participating in role-playing or historical reenactment. Other examples include the kindergarten practice of having children perform various motions from left to right in preparation for reading education.

[edit] Applications

Movement has long been used as an aid to mnemonics, as with the right-hand rule in physics. Pedagogical theorists such as Howard Gardner, however, assert that understanding of space and motion well is a distinct kind of intelligence in itself, useful in such various fields as engineering, database design, and athletics such as martial arts or dance.^{[citation needed]} Some proponents of kinesthetic learning see it primarily as a way to increase association through repetition, but some proponents of "educational kinesthetics" such as Brain Gym assert that certain physical motions increase the density of neurological networks within the brain itself, especially when practiced by growing children. The ability to maintain awareness of one's own physical position in space is sometimes called proprioception.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Differentiated Thinking Styles

Related thinking styles and learning styles are visual (learning through visuals and visualization) and verbal (learning through words and thinking in words), and less commonly, aural (musical thinking associated with rote aural patterning) and logical (mathematical and systems thinking in which one thinks in categories and relationships between factors).^{[citation needed]}