Rita Dunn – författare

The goal of this book is to provide teachers with the theoretical and practical information needed to meet the daily challenge of individualizing instruction for gifted and talented students with different learning styles in regular classrooms. These students spend most of their time in regular courses. Teachers and counselors often are urged to provide for the unique needs of each of these learners without being shown how such adolescents differ from each offer in their learning style traits. This is the first book devoted entirely to the topic, and it is based on a two-year study in many different nations.

Staff developers are presented with an introduction to learning styles, that is, how people learn new or difficult information. When staff development is based on a learning-style approach, the same information is introduced in alternative ways and participants can choose to learn through the resources or approaches most closely matched to their style. The editors have compiled many interesting and practical strategies that presenters in staff development sessions can use to involve participants in experimenting with new ideas. These methods will provide enrichment, resulting in a successful staff development.

This text synthesizes the research on the learning style characteristics of five culturally diverse groups: Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and European Americans. Although each of these groups has distinguishing features and differs from other groups on some of the 22 elements that constitute learning style, there are broad within-group variations that preclude generalizations. Dunn and Griggs identify a multidimensional model of learning style, describe a comprehensive assessment instrument for identifying an individual's learning style, and provide a variety of educational interventions that accommodate diverse learning style preferences.

Education is a profession in which billions of federal dollars have been spent to reduce academic underachievement—particularly for minority children from poverty homes. Few funded programs have reduced failure on standardized achievement tests. Despite either repetition or innovation, most children who fail do not perform substantially better the next time around. On the other hand, practitioners who have used the Dunn and Dunn learning-styles approaches have reported statistically higher standardized achievement test scores among average, poorly achieving, and special education students.This book is based on the practical, diverse experiences of more than thirty different supervisors throughout the United States. Representing a variety of urban and suburban locations with diverse student populations, each supervisor was able to obtain significantly higher standardized achievement test scores for his or her student populations.

Dunn and Griggs challenge the traditional instructional process of lecture/discussion in college classroom and describe the theory, practice, and research that support a wider variety of approaches to better accommodate the learning-style preferences of each student. Twenty-five practitioners from varied backgrounds and disciplines, representing 14 colleges and universities, outline alternative strategies they use with diverse students in their institutions of higher education. Some of these practitioners have been using learning-style for decades. Others have conducted research to test the various tenets of the Dunn and Dunn Learning- Style Model, and a few, only for the past five years, have begun providing instructional strategies that are congruent with their students' preferences.A road map is provided for college faculty to assist them in moving toward accommodating students' learning-style strengths by comparing the major theories of learning styles that range from uni- to multi-dimensional in scope. Strategies include: identifying and administering valid and reliable instruments for assessing college students' learning styles, interpreting assessment results so that each student becomes aware of his/her own strengths and is provided a computer-generated prescription for improving their study skills and successfully completing assignments, designing instruction to respond to both global and analytic students' processing styles, developing course content and materials to accommodate the learning-style preferences of college students, and evaluating the impact of learning-styles-based instruction.

Today, there is little deviation from the standard, business-as-usual practices in the world of education. What If? challenges these stale practices and asks the important questions that can improve schools beyond the current state of mediocrity. Written for administrators, supervisors, teachers, parents—even politicians and corporate executives—this book provides more than 25 specific problem-solving strategies for improving education without increasing costs. Rita Dunn and Shirley A. Griggs use more than 40 years of background in education, as well the renowned Dunn and Dunn Learning Style Model, to focus on the ways in which we can truly improve schools. The model, which identifies elements within environmental, emotional, sociological, physiological, and psychological domains, reveals how individuals best understand and retain information. This basis is then applied to the What If? situations to unearth the most promising practices for school improvement.What If Students Were to Write Their Own Honor Code? What if Principals Understood Each Teacher's Learning Style? What If Parents Knew How to Help Their Children Study at Home? These are just a few of the important situations analyzed by this book. The appeal is clearly widespread and covers the concerns of nearly every essential action-oriented community stakeholder group.

This book provides not only educators, but parents and caretakers with a variety of engaging instructional strategies for K-8 students. These approaches enable all students to read easily and enjoyably by utilizing different styles and approaches. None typically are used in conventional classrooms, but children who either have not mastered—or who do not enjoy—reading, become involved in and energized with active participation. When these activities are introduced, many children will begin recognizing words, stringing them together, increase vocabulary, and reading within the first four months of beginning_if not earlier.

No single approach to teaching is effective with all children; each helps those with identified learning-style strengths to increase their knowledge base within the first three or four months of classroom use. Some learners will want to continue using a single method; others will prefer a variety of approaches. When the activities described herein are introduced to students whose learning styles they match, most will demonstrate strong abilities to learn and remember new and difficult content within the first four months of beginning_if not earlier. This book is written to prevent more children from becoming at risk and to help those who already have fallen behind their classmates and do not enjoy school. Each chapter describes different instructional strategies, a summary chart shows how to match at-risk learners with the specific approach most likely to substantially increase their academic achievement. These instructional approaches are designed to engage youngsters in action-oriented activities that gradually increase cognition and help children to internalize and retain what they are taught. Applications of these instructional strategies are suggested for increasing performance in literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies.