David,
Although I was a teacher for about 14 years (English lit, ESL, basic literacy skills, and computer basics), I had never heard of VARK and I was obviously remiss in not looking at the issues of learning styles. I gravitated toward techniques and approaches which seemed to work better but I was too focused on content. This was probably the result of enrolling in the grad school of Education at UC Berkeley, finding it very barren (this was decades ago) and so after two years in the Army, when I returned I switched to the grad program in English Literature - and was much happier. After that negative "educational" experience, I focused on content when I became a teacher.
I see there is controversy on the subject of learning styles. Here is a sampling of the range of opinion about the topic, including the difficulties of conducting research.
www.edutopia.org/article/learning-styles-real-and-useful-todd-finleyVARK clearly has reached an audience and is being used fairly widely by teachers.
From the pdf: VARK is an acronym for Visual, Aural, Read/write and
Kinesthetic. VAK inventories had been around for years.
What was new in my work was a second 'visual' modality
for Read/write learners. From what I read and observed,
it seemed obvious that some students had a distinct
preference for the written word whilst others preferred
symbolic information as in maps, diagrams, and charts.
These two preferences were not always found in the
same person. There is more acceptance of this
distinction today than in the 1980s.
Using VARK
Users complete the questionnaire online or on paper.
VARK is based on responses to a questionnaire rather than testing of participants, so that limits its usefulness as a tool in scientific research. But as the VARK paper itself points out, the VARK approach is best thought of as a useful aid in the classroom rather than a scientific measure.
Not Quite Devil's Advocate: Even if there are different learning styles, it is a different matter whether those styles correlate with preference and performance as a remote viewer.
However, let's look a little at the VARK categories and remote viewing data. Visual, aural, read/write and kinesthetic.
Visual: I know a viewer, taught by one of the lesser known RV pioneers, who didn't realize that you could get words in remote viewing (sic!). He gets cartoon outlines that "come in" over a 9 minute period or so and are, he says, quite accurate. Some viewers try to visualize and they draw what they visualize. That is one technique I use when sketching. (The other technique i use is to just let the hand draw what it wants to draw - "Free draw". Both methods work about equally well for me.) Some say that remote viewing is not as accurate a term as Anomalous Cognition, Remote Sensing, Remote Perception, etc. because RV is not all or primarily visual or "viewing". However, to simplify, a heck of a lot of the data in RV relates to visuals: descriptions of shapes, colors, size, depth, location, motion and perspectives compared with data from other senses. We know that the human brain devotes a large amount of resources towards visual processing (and is the sense most studied).
Aural data. Although I consider myself very musically oriented (I compose music), I seldom hear anything during a session, either literally (interesting word in this context!) or just having a sense of hearing something. I have few aural impressions and the same with smell and taste. And in the thousands of sessions I've seen in three organizations/groups over the last 17 years and elsewhere, the proportion of aural data is quite small, and the same for smell and taste.
Read/write: Well, the bulk of RV data is certainly written words - descriptors. One can dictate a session (I've heard very few of these) and use the audio file or transcribe it. But this is seldom done. We rely on the (usually) handwritten descriptors, including in many cases a written summary. Since one has to write one word at a time, the data is presented linearly and in "method RV" (TDRV, CRV, etc) various formats are used to "best" "objectify" this data. (Whereas you get those thousand words in a picture; well, maybe 100, given the generally primitive sketches we as viewers produce. Of course you have to draw the graphic one line at a time too...) Moreover there is the issue of "overlay" when using words. That is to say, you write boiling teapot when it is a nuclear reactor. (The actual historical example of this contained a sketch, which was "visual overlay". This brings up the subject of whether it is really "
Analytical Overlay" and also the subject of metaphor in cognition and in remote viewing. Just watering the soil here... )
Kinesthetic. I would differentiate kinesthesia and feelings. There is debate in the mainstream cognitive science literature about definitions of feelings, emotions, mental and physical sensations and more. You can find some quite contrary and odd! opinions on this. When I say emotions, as in SUARV-E, I am referring to "emotional content", in particular happiness, sadness, joy, sorrow, anguish, indifference, etc.
Feelings span a greater range. You can have "physical feelings" apart from, something different than, emotions. TransDimensional Systems was big on kinesthesia. We were encouraged to "feel", to physically touch things with hands and other body parts and try to sense what was at the target that way. The physical feel of it. Don Walker even coined the term Knosomatics (from roots for "body knowledge"), which was adopted by TDS. This is clearly one "mode" in remote viewing. Whether it is a learning mode, I don't know.
I've ranged a bit here. As we agree, there is a lot to explore!
Thanks again for posting about this and I hope others join the discussion with their insights and experiences.
Jon K
