Reflection Paper

While participating in the PY 544 course, The Adult Learner, the research, the online discussions, and the projects of the class have moved my thoughts and perceptions of learning and teaching toward new levels of understanding. Some of my long-held educational views and beliefs have had to be reevaluated and some radically changed as I have come to understand the research and best practices surrounding adult education. My new knowledge has shown the need to reexamination professional learning opportunities for the teachers and staff at my school in order to ensure effective and appropriate educational learning experiences that support understandings of differentiation and dispel the myth of learning styles.

When first contemplating the

My desire to support all students allowed me to incorrectly assume that because students were different, their learning styles must be different. It was my responsibility as a teacher to teach a lesson that incorporated multiple learning styles. Through my recent learning experiences, I now understand that this type of thinking was all part of the myth of learning styles. “Students differ in their abilities, interests, and background knowledge, but not in their learning styles. Students may have preferences about how to learn, but no evidence suggests that catering to those preferences will lead to better learning” (Riener &Willingham, 2010, Why should educators care section, para.

This is to ensure effective and appropriate educational learning experiences that dispel the myth of learning styles yet, still allow a focus on the integral differentiation approaches to support different learners within the same classroom. Teachers need support to consistently utilize differentiation strategies and to also efficiently adapt lesson content in order to support student learning. “There does seem to be a best way to present different types of information” (Jacobs, 2015, para