Understanding the Relationship between Learning Style and Multiculturalism for School Counselors.

A major concern of educators, counselors, and parents in the United States and throughout the world has been the costs and consequences of the high number of at-risk and dropout minority students. The intent of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that school counselors must know the implications of multicultural students' varied learning styles for both counseling and teaching. It states that this goal will ultimately assist counselors and educators in successfully reversing underachievement among culturally diverse students, and will assist multicultural adolescents with diverse learning styles. It suggests that counselors, using the DDLSI (Dunn and Dunn Learning Style Inventory, 1989), could assist adolescents and children in determining their learning style preference using appropriate interventions to help in understanding the students' strengths, and to help make accommodations for their diagnosed weaknesses. The role of the school counselor is seen as a proactive component of this concept: seeking to integrate this concept into the overall culture of the school, assisting with training of the faculty, administering the DDLSI to students and teachers, using follow-up meetings with students and parents to explain the material, and implementing strategies for accommodation. (Contains 12 references.) (JDM)