A new version of the Beauty students and their learning styles

Beautiful students !
by Helen White - Tuesday, 28 July 2009, 09:59 PM


Pedagogy in definition comes from the Greek paíd (child) and ágō (lead), so in essence the term relates more to the education of children. Andragogy; the term re-introduced by the late Malcolm Knowles(1984) is therefore more suited to our learning context.

Students undertaking the Certificate in Beauty Therapy qualification offered at Aoraki Polytechnic are a diverse and interesting group of ladies. I make the generalisation that the students are Ladies as we have only had 1 male student in 9 years of delivery!

I have a post about one particular "fictitious" student on my blog

Many of the students come to us straight from school or haven't even completed the final years of schooling and have a very different attitude to learning to our more mature students who have greater need for deeper learning and also bring with them many more life skills, many are Mother's of young children, the majority have part-time work and full-time households to run.

J S Atherton at http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/deepsurf.htm states

"Many current university students have been "coached" by their teachers to get the grades they need for admission: they have been trained to be surface learners, and their experience is that it "works"."

Another link to a study on students approaches to learning can be found here http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/44/0b/1a.pdf


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"The adult comes into an educational activity largely because he is experiencing some inadequacy in coping with current life problems. He has problem centred learning"

Both statements above are relevant to our students.

We have generally had one or two students per intake for whom English is not their first language and their learning styles can be different to others in the group as they are attempting to learn twice the amount compared to the native English speakers.

The learning styles of all the students can be related to the V.A.R.K. model (Fleming, 1987) try for yourself here. The majority of the students fit into the Kinasthetic and Visual learning styles catefories. We could also relate the students learning styles to Gardner (1983) and his theory of multiple intelligences. Students tend to fit into the Visual, physical and interpersonal learning styles.

Another link to my blog where I talk more about learning styles that relate to my students and the theories that I might be using.

For the course that I am going to design I am going to focus on the practical application of treatments in a commercial environment.

The students themselves, our International examining body, Aoraki Polytechnic, future employers and the tutor's are all stakeholders in the course and the outcomes of it.

Students will be more prepared for the working environment with the development of this course; our examining body has a requirement that students perform treatments in a commercially acceptable time; Aoraki Polytechnic aims to prepare students for the workplace with a focus on hands on learning; future employers will have students who are more "work ready" and tutors will be able to reinforce learning and give students "'real working experiences".

One of the aims of the Aoraki Polytechnic Charter is :

"To provide appropriate and supportive student-oriented learning experiences.'

Hopefully my new course will be going someway towards this.


Helen White - July 2009
You're never toom young to try something new