Thomas Edison once claimed that “great ideas originate in the muscles.” If great ideas indeed were originated in the muscles, could the use of movement and activity, that stimulate muscles, potentially help elicit our thoughts, while also untapping our potential to learn? To that end, could the use of movement offer a more effective means of learning and be applied in arduous subjects, such as mathematics, rather than passive forms of learning, such as sitting at a desk or listening to a lecture?
Researchers in psychology, education, and neuroscience have spent decades understanding that the way in which we learn, describes our motivations and acquisition of information. They have looked at types of learners and trends in education …show more content…
David Kolb’s Learning Styles Inventory
Of many theories established in the late 20th century, David Kolb was instrumental in identifying an important relationship between movement and learning. Kolb considered the many factors of an individual’s learning preference upon developing his model, the Learning Styles Inventory (LSI), in 1971. (Kolb, Alice Y., and David A. Kolb) Within this model, there were two central aspects addressed: perceiving and …show more content…
With the research presented by Gardner, Kolb, and many others, it has been easy to recognize the obvious obstacle in traditional schooling: the failure to adapt to multiple forms of learning and intelligence. With this in mind, at the turn of the 21st century, Carol Tomlinson developed her philosophy of differentiated instruction to address the need of varied learning styles in order to better serve those learning. Tomlinson encouraged educators to understand and respond to the varied characteristics of the learners in the classroom, by establishing methods to adapt educational modalities for the recognized intelligences. Many of her strategies include offering multiple versions of the same assignment with a common goal of learning a set of material (Tomlinson, Carol Ann, and Susan Demirsky Allan). For example, in a Geography unit, the students may be required to memorize the countries or land forms on a map. While the teacher may provide a map to the visual learners, differentiation expects that the educator will provide other materials to those who prefer to auditorily or kinesthetically engage, such as a tape recording or opportunity to draw on the class whiteboard. Tomlinson’s methods offer a way to engage and enrich students of all types, in any