Learning all the digits of pi? U.S. history in its entirety? All of Shakespeare's sonnets? Done and…dunn.

Yeah, we're gonna be doing that a lot.

Sure, you may not have so utter a sense of completion every time with the Dunn and Dunn method, but this model for learning styles can give some great insight into how individual learners respond differently to types and materials of instruction.

Getting it Dunn

Professors Rita and Kenneth Dunn have done years and years of research and writing about their observations in the classroom, and the bulk of it showed up in the 1970s.

What they saw was that some students like learning alone, while others like having the teacher floating nearby at all times. The hypothesis? (As paraphrased from click4it's summary of the Dunn and Dunn model) That environmental, emotional, sociological, and physical elements contribute to the learning environment, and therefore to different students' individual ways of learning. And for the Dunns, the takeaway was that teachers ought to provide a range of strategies to address all those styles and make learning more efficient.

The Dunn Learning Styles

The Dunns talk about five types of stimuli that can affect a student, and the elements that play into each stimulus to set apart individual learners. They look real pretty on a chart, in case that's your style. Plus, that link is the basis for our info below. So, without further ado, let's get dunn to the specifics:

1. Environmental

Taking environmental stimuli into account means you ask questions about things like where learners prefer to get their learning dunn. Is it in a cool and quiet place or somewhere with lots of throw pillows and mood lighting?

2. Emotional

This includes elements like levels of motivation and responsibility, how much the student conforms and pursues a task until its dunn, and what sorts of structures are helpful for the learner.

3. Sociological

No, it doesn't mean you have to know the socioeconomic background of the kiddo in question. This just has to do with how the student works best: on his or her own, in pairs, in a group, according to a certain pattern, or with more (or less) guidance from the instructor. A range of those can apply to one kid, but finding the combo that "clicks" with certain learners can often make the information click, too.

4. Physiological

This is all about how the body (in addition to the mind) responds to the learning task. That means that some students are more alert at certain times of day based on whether they had eggs or chocolatey cereal for breakfast. It also draws from other learning styles to ask whether the learner is visual, auditory, or kinesthetic to understand whether things like music, art, or dancing all over the room will help this student get the lesson down.

5. Psychological

This doesn't just mean is the kid sort of sad today and therefore not so into learning about Aristotle. The psychological element refers to how the learner processes and responds to information and ideas: is this learner analytic and good with numbers? Or global, preferring to see the big picture? Is he or she reflective, taking quiet time to puzzle out the answer, or impulsive in shooting that hand up in the air? These all have to do with the psych factor.

Getting Things Dunn With Dunn

The idea for applying the Dunn learning styles to the classroom is that you pay attention to each of these elements and try to alter the environment to suit your students. For example, on the environmental end of things, you can physically divide the space, or adjust it at various points, so that the warm learners can thrive on one side of the room while the cool learners are doing their utmost on the other side.

Don't have that level of temperature control? No worries. Varying your teaching techniques so that you take multiple learning styles into account can maximize your efficiency with the maximum of your students. So sometimes they're working in groups and sometimes individually; in the morning the light is brighter and in the afternoon you open the windows instead; and you craft a range of assignments to suit the different methods of taking on a task among your students. And hey: those are just a few examples. There's a whole bunch you can do to incorporate this understanding of learning into your own teaching.

Get the gist? Good. This article is—sorry, one last time—dunn.