Massage Educators

Comment

Comment by Scott Bukovac on July 30, 2010 at 8:00am

Jan.... a bit of research this morning turned up one publishedarticle, and many mentions of schools that do learning styles inventories, but no published results. The published article was by Don McQuillan out of New Zealand:

http://www.ijtmb.org/index.php/ijtmb/article/viewArticle/82/117

In this article he shows a pie chart which shows that of the students at the Otago Polytechnic massage therapy programs - approximately 42% were mixed kinesthetic, 34% kinesthetic, and the remaining 24% were visual / reader-writer/ visual-auditory. The only "catch" here is that I don't think the article indicated how this particular data was generated (ie. what questionnaire, etc.) This certainly does support the idea that many MT students are kinesthetically oriented (which makes sense), but it also points out that at least 24% strongly prefer a different learning style and that there is some 42% that are "mixed" kinesthetic (i.e. kinesthetic mixed with other styles).

Some interesting food for thought, huh? :-)

Comment by Susan G. Salvo on July 30, 2010 at 7:37am

During orientation, I display this information to students to assist them in developing their own learning strategies. I came from Sylvan Learning Centers. They state that it is based on research, but I have not examined the research personally. But is does suggest that a multisensory approach assists retention.

How Much of What People Learn Do They Retain:
10% of what you READ
20% of what you HEAR
30% of what you SEE
50% of what you SEE and HEAR simultaneously
70% of what you SAY as you TALK
90% of what you SAY as you DO a thing

Comment by Charlie Peebles CMT/LMT on July 30, 2010 at 7:23am

Jan,
I have always been a visual & auditory person, however, kinesthetic does reinforce my learning process. I'll have to do some research to find out if such data exist. But I guess there are always going to be people that don't fit what we think should be. Right?

Cheers

Comment by Jan Schwartz on July 30, 2010 at 6:49am

Scott, I don't believe there is data on this. I think the assumption is that since massage therapy is a hands on skill that it follows people must be mostly kinesthetic learners. I would ask how they know that.

When I was at a massage school, I asked incoming students what kind of learners they thought they were. Usually the question was greeted with a blank stare, After I said the VAK thing and explained the word kinesthetic, most said they must be kinesthetic because they were here to learn how to do massage.

I"m not sure where I fall on the learning style debate, but I'm curious about what other teachers think.

Comment by Scott Bukovac on July 29, 2010 at 10:49pm

Following up on a comment that Jan Schwartz made regarding the "reason/excuse that massage therapists can't learn well in a certain way because they are mostly kinesthetic learners" Does anyone actually know if there is actual data which supports that particular statement/reason/excuse?

I know for myself personally, though I do well with kinesthetic learning, I am actually very well-balanced across the VAK styles... often needing to blend visual and kinesthetic and sometimes speaking my way through something to really lock it in.

Please understand I am not saying that by way of being difficult... but more to understand if there is data on this. I am a B.Sc. and M.Sc. lab-based medical scientist who left the lab (due to burn-out), and currently am half-way through my 2200hr Massage Therapy training program here in Ontario, Canada. I have also completed a community college based certificate in Instructing Adults. I have also long had a passion for and experience in teaching in various venues/communities.

Anyone's thoughts? Links to data/papers?

Comment by Jan Schwartz on July 29, 2010 at 1:12pm

To piggy back on what Susan said, I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago and linked to this site. It's kind of fun to help think about our educational philosophy. Note that there is a lot of white space in the website so you need to scroll to see the questions. BTW, I identified as reconstructionism, which is pretty accurate for me.

Comment by Susan G. Salvo on July 29, 2010 at 12:20pm

I second Charlie's WOW.

And I'll throw more into the conversation…

It’s my favorite definition of learning.

Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience and/or practice.

I realize it’s behaviorism, but most learning theories are based on a behaviorist viewpoint.

Hey Charlie, most of the folks in this conversation are ALL OVER the internet. If you have internet in your classroom, we are a mouse click away. ;-)

Comment by Charlie Peebles CMT/LMT on July 29, 2010 at 11:48am

WOW! This is good stuff!!! Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences back in 1983 (and there are 8 not just 3 and now the new theory has 11) but like many has stated repetition in different forms makes the training work for all. By the way does any of you want a job at my school??? Great discussion!

Comment by Noel Norwick on July 29, 2010 at 10:58am

Jan: Re matching teaching styles to student learning bias or base on subject matter; research on development of professionalism suggests that it depends. For those truly interested in the subject, I suggest reading, Development of Professional Expertise - Toward Measurement of Expert Performance and Design of Optimal Learning Environments, edited by K. Anders Ericsson, Cambridge University Press,2009. And possibly the much lighter read, The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle, Bantam Books, 2009.

Comment by Sandy Fritz on July 29, 2010 at 10:58am

To expand on Susans comment -But whatever the teaching style, the key to learning is repetition. They need to hear it, see it, and do it often.--

Repetition is essential to comprehension but the repetition needs to be novel each time and become more integrated into practical application during repetition. For example: using good ole Blooms taxonomy . The link explains it well http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html Knowledge in the platform for new learning. Knowledge is the recall of data or information. I think that this is the most difficult level of learning regardless of learning styles. It can also be a tedious level to teach and because of this the students may not really end up grounded in fundamentals such as terminology, anatomy, basic massage application and so forth. I know that i get bored with bony landmarks and draping and positioning on the massage table. Understanding- the next level of learning according to Bloom often does not occur until the forth or fifth or more repetition of the knowledge and each of those repetition must be novel or the brain screens it. Therefor- consider bony landmarks. The student can read, then label,, then palpate, then identify on a bone,then draw a bone will the landmarks on it, label a different chart., take a quiz, find the landmarks during a massage and maybe by this time they can recall the name and location. Students will likely ask the inevitable question--why do I need to know that- so at the beginning you need to set the stage for learning by jumping to learning level three- application just so the students will see the relevance in becoming competent in the knowledge. The ongoing repetition is the opportunity to present the information in multiple leaning styles. Everybody learns visually, auditory and kinesthetic. An effective educator or textbook or online course for that matter should continually repeat content in multiple ways gradually moving up the learning levels until the student can synthesize and evaluate- ie become their own teacher.
the first stage is knowledge-

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