Teaching Approaches and Learning Styles

This chapter argues that the effective implementation of the whole curriculum for pupils with learning difficulties demands the considered deployment of a wide range of approaches to teaching and the deliberate cultivation among pupils of a similarly diverse array of learning styles. It examines the behaviourist tradition and its implications in terms of teaching approaches and learning styles. The chapter notes that the effects of the developments have been both positive and negative. It discusses integrated approaches to curriculum delivery within the core and other foundation subjects of the National Curriculum and the merits of a balanced variety of teaching approaches. The National Curriculum simply provides the opportunity to conduct a long-overdue review and to implement some long looked for innovations. The topic approach has a long and varied history in mainstream primary education. Some schools have found it necessary to vary the groups in which pupils work in order to provide good role models for language, or behaviour.