“I think when you overcome something like [dyslexia], you learn what it takes to be successful and how to approach problems” (Nolan Ryan in Nosek, 1997)

There are a number of benefits to individuals with learning disabilities from obtaining an assessment. Awareness that there is a specific reason for the persistent difficulty often brings emotional relief. Individuals no longer attribute personal inadequacies to the underlying problem. Personal knowledge of why individuals have experienced definable weaknesses often has an immediate impact on how they perceive themselves, (LDAC, 2001). Better understanding of the underlying problem also leads to a better understanding of personal strengths, which is a first step towards building self-esteem and developing coping and learning strategies.

What are Learning Styles?

Learning styles are approaches to assessment or instruction emphasizing the variations in temperament, attitude and preferred manner of tackling a task (NALLD, 1995).

“According to MacKeracher (1996), learning styles may be thought of as the way in which people:

• Take in information
• Select certain information for further processing
• Use meaning, values, skills, strategies to solve problems, make decisions and create new meanings
• Change any or all of the processes or structures described in this list

“There has been a growth of research into the subject of learning styles in the last decade or so. The result has been numerous ways of categorizing learning styles...these have been broadly grouped into four categories:

• Physical domain – visual, auditory and motor styles
• Cognitive domain – concrete, abstract, sequential, random styles
• Affective domain – internal and external psychological and physiological factors that affect how we feel
• Culture and learning