Learning Style

Psychological type combined with certain sensory characteristics identified by leading theorists can be classified as learning style. Learning styles are the ways in which people acquire knowledge.

Your learning style may make you more comfortable with some kinds of teaching and learning. Since you don't usually have a choice about how a subject is taught, it's important to get comfortable with different methods for learning.

Both the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Jung Typology Test will help you identify your psychological type. Visit www.humanmetrics.com to take the Jung Typology Test and find out if your learning style includes sensing, intuition, judging or perceiving.

How your mind works when it takes in information determines if you are sensing (S) or intuitive (N). If you are considered a sensing person, you are practical, want the facts, focus on detail, like routine and read directions before you begin. If you are considered an intuitive person, you enjoy creating theories, are innovative, look for patterns, do not like routine and tend to ignore directions.

To sensing individuals, an eye is an eye, a heart a heart. To an intuitive individual, an eye is a camera, a heart is a pump. Sensing people put things together according to the step-by-step instructions, whereas an intuitive person looks at the parts, thinks about how it should be put together and starts to assemble (looking only at directions if pieces are left over).

Your attitude toward making decisions determines if you are judging (J) or perceiving (P). Judging people are uncomfortable until they make a decision, structured, meet deadline ahead of time and prefer organization.

Perceiving people focus on options. They wait until the last minute to make decisions, are spontaneous and consider deadlines as guides. Judging people will look up a word in the dictionary, then return to reading. A perceiving person finds the word in the dictionary, then continue to the next word in the dictionary.

Some medical school courses, such as gross anatomy, embryology, histology and cell biology, require detail. Others - like physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology and pathology - require understanding process. Our preferred learning style tends to make us better at understanding either physical objects or process. You must ask yourself, "What is happening?" (detail) as well as "Why?" (process).

There is a vast amount of material to cover and content knowledge is very important. Study with a colleague who has a learning style opposite to your own. Working alone may seem more time-efficient than working with others, however while preparing for National Boards be aware of the danger in working alone. When you work alone you may not be able to consider all the dimensions of a subject. Balance is key!