AN ANALYSIS OF LEARNING STYLE DIFFERENCES AND INPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGICAL CONGURENCY BETWEEN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS AND EDUCATORS WITH CULTURALLY INCOMPATIBLE TEACHING STYLES.
Nichole Gibbs; mentor, Dr. Constance Ellison, Department of Human Development and Psychoeducational Studies and Dr. Orlando L. Taylor, Department of Communication Science and Disorders.

The increasingly low academic achievements of African American students in our nation's school is an issue of paramount concern as our schools continue to fail to meet the needs of its African American students after decades of research on the learning style and culture of African Americans. Traditional strategies atempt to utilize culturally relevant teaching styles by attempting to establish consistency between African American learning styles and the pedagogical methods of educators. These strategies maintain the integrity of a unique and distinct African American ethos and further validate and affirm African American culture.
Research has consistently found differences in the cognitive and learning styles between African Americans and European Americans. The 4MAT Learning Type Measure (LTM) was developed to identify differences in learning styles of individuals. The purpose of this study is to determine if (1) African Americans and European Americans can be categorized according to the descriptors of the LTM, and (2) if categorizations can indeed be made, do they concur with the current research paradigms and models which identify differences in the cognitive and learning styles of i African Americans and European Americans.

Nichole Gibbs is originally from Washington, DC. A recent graduate, Gibbs was a psychology major and sociology minor with an overall G.P.A. of 3.5 and a 3.8 in her major. She has been accepted for graduate school at the City University of New York, Howard i University, and the University of Maryland. Gibbs looks forward to graduate study involving research that examines ethnicity and mental health, general self-esteem, racial self-esteem, attitude formation and change, social identity and cognition, and intergroup relations.
While an undergraduate, Gibbs was particularly fascinated by the courses, The Psychology of the Black Experience, taught by Dr. A. Wade Boykin, professor, psychology, which she says brought together many of the theories that she had learned about in other psychology courses. She cites as her mission, "to be a part of the creation of new programs that will emerge out of the desperate search for answers, as the pace becomes more feverish and as America's social climate becomes more instable and race relations more strained."

McNair Alumni