Educational assessment expert Carole Bogue adds to her publications on facilitating student learning and curriculum development with this scholarly homage memorializing the work of Dr. Donald E. Carline, Bogue’s graduate school mentor in the mid-’70’s at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Bogue summarizes for the classroom teacher—unfortunately in often-cumbersome detail—Carline’s five principal types of learning (Sensory Experience, Memory-Type, Motor-Type, Problem-Solving, and Emotional-Type), along with his practical classroom applications. Then the author updates and annotates each summary with recent studies and extensive bibliographies supporting each learning type, with the aim of facilitating discussion among professionals in workshops or college classrooms.
This book is not a guide or handbook for parents or students for successful learning outcomes. Rather, it’s an academic treatment of learning theory, ideal for graduate students, and would also serve well as a tool for administrators and teachers designing Core Curriculum assessment standards incorporating a broad spectrum of learning styles. For the classroom teacher, the awareness of students’ ways of learning chronicled here is an excellent checklist for inspiring quality classroom activities that teach to the whole child.
Written by and for professional educators, Bogue’s highly structured discussion is repetitive and characteristically dry with its preponderance of educational jargon. Occasionally, it borders on unreadable: “… such environments need to reflect results of research focused on perceptual learning and perception, patterns of sensory processing, and visual and auditory perception and processing, including phonological and phonemic awareness and phonological processing.” (The book’s solid organization, however, makes it user-friendly as a reference.) Bogue’s goal of connecting Carline’s insightful learning principles to recent research demonstrates that her mentor was, indeed, ahead of his time.
Raising educators’ awareness of what works in the classroom is the book’s important subtext: Bogue (as did Carline) believes students learn best kinesthetically, through their senses and emotions, and by solving problems, reasoning, and applying strategies. Carline’s genius is celebrated and preserved by Bogue, albeit it in a wordy discussion.
Also available as an ebook.
