Don’t you just love it when you know someone who can take all the information you have and make something useful with it? This is the strength of the Common Sense Learner. He is able to take all the facts gathered so accurately and sequentially by the Analytic Learner and put them to good use.

Some of the characteristics of this learning style include:

• Goal oriented – not just satisfied with facts unless they can test them
• Excel at problem solving “how tos”
• They live in a realistic world and not an “idea” world (concrete thinking vs. abstract)
• They see skills as knowledge rather than facts
• They don’t want to be given answers; they prefer to work out the solution. And here is the key, they want to be active and involved with discovering the solution.
• They prefer to work by themselves rather than in groups (very unlike the Imaginative or Dynamic Learners)
• They too do not like lectures! This is true of three of the four learning styles, yet most teachers insist that this is the most effective method. Well, remember next time, that ¾ of your class are not learning from your insistence on them learning the way you do!
• The most effective way to teach this group is by demonstration - show how what has been taught (the details and facts) work in life. They want to see Christianity worked out in practical ways. If they don’t, they may later just walk away from the faith not believing that it has any relevance. Application of truth is critical for them.

Example of really bad teaching: When I was in seminary, we were told we had to memorize all the kings of Israel and Judah, and spell them correctly. SO WHAT! Of what relevance is that to anyone’s life? To this day I could not reproduce that list again, nor would I want to. I love studying that period of time and learning from those kings, but this was a worthless exercise. If I had been shown how these kings still have things to teach me today, then I would have been interested enough to learn. What did I learn from that exercise – nothing. (If my teacher reads this, you are forgiven. But please don’t do it again.) If this is what a teacher expects, then ¾ of the class should expect to fail. In reality it is the teacher who failed because he did not understand the learning process or his students. (Think of the fun this is for the history teacher! Actually, it can be.)

God has made us all to learn in different ways. There is no right way and wrong way here, we are in this together. The Imaginative wants to know why this lesson is important; the Analytic wants to know the details of the story, but the Common Sense Learner wants to develop it into something meaningful and practical. These all work together. No teacher should ever feel threatened by learners who process information in a different way than they. They should embrace them. Then they should discover ways and methods to help them all learn.

Next time we will look at the learner most hated by teachers – the Dynamic.