Response to Highly Damaging TEDx “No Learning Styles” Talk
I am genuinely horrified at the support this recent TEDx talk has received. I feel it is the biggest regression in education in 100 years. As someone who has successfully worked with thousands of students internationally, and got them all to high achieving results and a sense of belonging in academia, I cannot stand the idea that education is becoming elitist again. I have received Ability Company Status for making education accessible to all.
Academics make too many assumptions - which I have had my own personal battles with over the years. Despite it all, I have earned a Ph.D. and a First Class Honours degree. My students are always heartened by the fact that if I could do it - so can they.
TED and TEDx talks generally enhance our World and make everything possible for people. I am horrified over this talk because it is so small minded and exclusive in its nature.
Not everyone can pick up a book and read it to learn. Not everyone can see the book. Not everyone can spell to write or hold the pen. Do not be presumptive in thinking all visual impaired people are not visual learners. Many of them are! All of us who work with students on the autism spectrum know that they process the World very differently to other students. Their visual and auditory processing has marked differences.
My success stories with students have been down pure and simply to the fact that I encourage them to work in the learning style that suits them - despite whatever perceived disabilities they might have.
I myself am still very much unable to distinguished phonic sound frequencies and never learned to spell in the way it is predominately taught in school. I have learned to read and write through purely visual techniques. I have brought this gift to many others who are now avid readers - despite years of torture in school and feeling inadequate. I get excited when parents tell me their children will not sleep because they are reading too much or now teaching their siblings to read their way.
I hate the idea that kinesthetic learners can be great at sports in school and rubbish at everything else. This is not acceptable and even our most successful sports heroes still anguish over how badly they did in school.
Practical people are great at the practicals in school but only get half the marks in the subject because the theory defeats them. Our auditory learners are in constant trouble for talking and often labeled as disruptive chatter boxes. The number of students labelled as ADHD seems to be growing annually as these students struggle to fit into the constraints of school and find it excessively boring. I certainly do not feel we need to blame our parents for our genes or feel that education is unattainable in any way.
We have a duty to understand, care and incorporate these learners into our education systems - not blankly dismiss them all as not existing. These are many of the reasons why students with learning difficulties and impairments have been marginalised for decades.
A better outlook for me has always been that if we get it right for these people we get it right for everyone. I hope people will start to stop and think before they blankly share this very irresponsible TEDx talk. I have not even touched on the personality factors involved in education. Most enlightened Educationalists agree that one size does not fit all. TED is supposed to make us think about our fellow people we share the Planet with.
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly
Dr Naoise O’Reilly Methods Development and Purple Success:™
In February 2009 I started a school, The Homework Club® as what I saw as my lab space in order to develop new teaching methods and understanding of learning. Since then through a number of projects these are the methods and theories that I have developed:
Purple Learning Project®: Understanding of setting up educational environments for all and working simultaneously with all learning styles, difficulties and conditions in the same room.
Purple Profiling™: Unique profiling methods to understand all learners and work effectively with them in the shortest time possible. Now expanded to all business employees and business situations. Focus is on success for each person.
Purple Development™: New development theory to understand patterns in education and to change the Educational Blueprint™. From this a new approach to education and a new focus on expression was developed, Expression Developist™.
The Periodic Table of the Development of Results™, Purple Success™: New unique method and theory to understand the individual elements to get successful results with all ages and individuals in the shortest time possible. Applied at all levels in education and all sized companies, situations and individuals globally.
Purple Processing Scales™: Understanding the individual learning styles and how they work in different situations. Which has lead on to a theory, The Pressure Cooker Effect™.
Purple Success Timescale™: Theory of the development moments in individuals from Child to Adult and their significance in dealing with situations. How Successful You Feel for Life™.
Diffuse Focus™: A new theory on the reasons behind ADD and ADHD. How to develop a new learning approach to accommodate these.
Forget Phonics Reading Method™: A new approach to teaching reading specifically for individuals with dyslexic spectrum reading difficulties. Typically a student can now learn to read and write in 4 weeks.
I have also put significant work in to developing specific programs to get successful results with students with Aspergers. I have developed a number of new programs for specific school issues such as the Primary to Secondary school Transition, Expression Club™ for dyslexic learners to keep them on top over summer months, Dyslexia organisation workshop, Maths Orientation studies for Dyscalculia, Supporting students at home with Aspergers through homework and a Purple Pre-School Success™ program to start dyslexic spectrum students ahead in reading and writing before school. I have currently been putting a lot of work into developing new theories for working with students with Auditory Processing Disorders and Dysgraphia.
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly Expression Developist™
Divergent Movie Demystified for Real World by Doctor’s Psychological Profiling
Divergent is making waves in popular culture with the release of part one of the hollywood movie trilogy inspired by Veronica Roth’s books. This follows the mammoth success of The Hunger Games starring academy award winning actress Jennifer Lawrence.
There are two main themes in Divergent. The first is that it is bad and possibly even fatal to fit into more than one aptitude. The second major theme relates to growing away from your parents.
In Divergent’s futuristic world it is seen as threatening to fit into more than one faction made up of five temperaments which are selfless, peaceful, honest, brave and knowledgeable. It is difficult to compare this directly to personality theory as it is generally regarded that there are in fact sixteen types of people in the real world.
However, this does compare to our four defined learning styles which are the ways that people take in information from the world. Our four categories of psychological profiling methods include auditory, visual, practical and kinesthetic.
All of the students we work with that do not fit in a box and struggle in school have what we call multiplicity. This means, like in Divergent, they have all four aptitudes. They are quite often overwhelmed by the amount of information they absorb from all environments. Multiplicity is what people commonly see as “clever” and “intelligent.” All of our ideas of cleverness and intelligence come from people who can absorb ideas quickly and have a multitude of interests. This is where we break away from the norm.
Multiplicity is drilled out of children in school by age fifteen. Only a very small percentage of the older students we meet have still retained their natural multiplicity. They are quite often seen as “freaks.” Some of them were very heavily medicated before working with us for just having too much energy or being too “distracted.”
In the film Divergent the main character takes an aptitude test at the age of sixteen. This is true to school life. There have been some pretty hilarious conversations within our team about what they were told at sixteen. The Senior D.N.A. Geneticist on our team was told at sixteen that he would never be any good a science.
This brings us to the second main theme in the film and the challenges the main character experiences when she realizes that she cannot follow her family. She does not easily fit into their faction and this is a real life experience for many of our students. Children really struggle when in their teenage years they appear to have nothing in common with their family and parents don’t understand them.
In many cases the students we work with have just simply skipped a generation in aptitudes and personality. It is quite often revealed that they are much more like their grandparents and great grandparents. A mother or father can feel that their children have nothing in common with them and this can also be the case in partnerships where there are children from different relationships.
We work with adult clients in the business world in their late thirties too who had struggled to find their path in life. Having attempted the career path of their parents they have not fitted in. They quite often do not feel any real support or understanding from home about who they really are.
The good news is that it is perfectly alright to be divergent and movies like this can only help to shine a positive light on psychological profiling and our ongoing research in the area of personality types and achievement. Anyone who works in personality theory does so because they have an overwhelming desire to help people find out who they really are and wish to help them to succeed.
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly & Marie O'Riordan
St. Patrick’s Day 2014: Ireland the Land of Learners
One of the great difficulties with education is that we attempt to fit everyone into the same box. It is generally accepted that this does not happen but how else can we effectively teach the masses? Well, as we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and all that is Irish this is in fact the first mistake when thinking about teaching. If we instead focus on the learners, the actual students and look at the world from their perspective we may begin to not only accommodate everybody but have them reach their full potential. Most of all, even experience these people being happy and enjoying education.
So, if we take the learning nation of Ireland, what are we really like here? We are a country stockpiled with sociable chatterboxes and have a huge number of successful athletics when you think about the size of this land. We make an impact wherever we go and we are also very generous philanthropically for the size of Ireland. We as a race contribute hugely to global charities, peace keeping forces and volunteer work. We are hugely proud of anything remotely Irish.
So, in simple terms that makes us auditory and kinesthetic learners that need huge amounts of encouragement and praise. We really care about what everyone else thinks of us. So like most other parts of the world we are a largely extrovert society. We need to work with others in social settings and we are very social beings.
The hugely interesting fact about auditory learners is that they do not need to just listen, they need to talk as well. We all know how much we Irish love to speak. The idea of us starting school at five and learning to be quiet in a classroom situation is just outright ridiculous. We must admit that we work our way through so much in Ireland by gossiping. The information overload taxi driver, the restroom queue gossip or the local store conversation. It makes us better able to cope with the legendary Irish rainy weather if nothing else.
One of the real difficulties with being an auditory learner (besides just being in trouble in class for talking all of the time) is the rambling way we work, there is no structure. This is the most common difficulty that many of our students have, especially all the super talkative kinesthetic boys who are brilliant on the sports field but feel like trash at everything else in school. They simply have no idea how to structure an answer or to focus their thoughts onto the page at hand.
Sure, for the Irish it is perfectly alright and acceptable to write exactly the way you talk too. The best way to work with auditory kinesthetic learners is through role play. This is sociable group work that allows us to talk out scenarios. We get to put ourselves in the situation and we all do great in this part of oral school examinations. We are a country filled with bucket loads of generationally provided and divided political views. It is important for us to get to talk about these at length on a regular basis.
Students almost fall off of their chairs with shock when we ask them what they think or have a personal opinion on, but it is so much easier to write about what you feel especially when this is what matters to you when you are kinesthetic. Normally boys just get to run this out of their systems on the sports field rather than working through it in english or history class.
It is equally vital to allow us Irish to talk about everything that matters to us in our own unique way. The Irish have a great gift of the gab, the wit that has a name for every object, landmark and sculpture. We talk about creativity and innovation, this is a wonderful example of innovation with words. We can express any situation as a joke. We have always been gifted story tellers and can spin any yarn.
We are also hugely competitive, hence our many sporting heroes, the mark we leave whatever we set our minds to. Competition is such a great way to inject energy into any learning environment too.
There is a pride deeply engrained in the Irish and as a result we can never cope with being made a fool of in public. We may try to joke our way out of any situation but it hurts deeply. Everyone we have ever spoken to in this country has a school story where they lost face and they have never forgotten it. This is why we have to focus on the learners always, the real people we are helping to grow and develop. Everyone is different but we all fall into patterns of behavior that can be accommodated. You can't just take an education model from one country to another and expect it to work, especially since the models are always developed for the teachers and governments not the students. There are very simple patterns and learning styles but you have to look for them and you have to use each nations strengths and values to achieve what is important for them, even the Irish. Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the island of saints and scholars.
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly & Marie O'Riordan
ADHD Treatment
I was delighted that the kindle version of the ADHD book I'm part of was launched last week in the US - according to them I'm one of the experts with proven results they searched the planet for!
Link to kindle book on Amazon
Purple Profiling™ & My Business Hat
It might seem odd to combine Business and Education but then I'm not your typical educationalist - in fact that is why I had to devise a new term and genre, Expression Developist™.
For me success is all held in the key to being able to be the best of yourself and express the person you truly wish to be!
Recently someone told me that,
"When I speak with you I feel that you are looking into my soul and it is so liberating."
The important point for me here is not just that I can see people's true potential inside but that it is ok for me to do this. People feel safe and trust that there will be no judgement of their crazy ideas and dreams. I have been told repeatedly by clients that "you give me permission to be myself" and recently in the pub when I was asked what I do and groaned... a friend stepped in and described what I do for me .. I hate the question "what do you do?" I was described as having "an aerial view brian" that can see where everyone is, the best thing they should be doing and how to go about doing it.
This is why we can together to blow it out of the water with The Forever Method. We combine our expertise, mine being how people tick to have them excel in as short a time as possible! For me this is why I can combine my work in Purple Profiling with the genius of The Forever Method because both are results driven and get those amazing results in the shortest timescale humanly manageable! For me it doesn't matter if I am working with an 18 month old small person or a 72 year old big person. The end result is the same - for them to truly Express themselves to Success!
Some of our resent success stories and media coverage are below
David did 6 figures in 7 days to beat entire 2012 in just a week after Marie & Dr. Naoisé of The Forever Method
CBS Money Watch also featured Our Client David & Us after His financial success in just 7 days with The Forever Method
Our Client David & Us featured on ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS etc. since His massive success within 7 days of working with Us
We made Top News Story in Business & Leadership
RTÉ Nationwide National T.V. Show on Marie O’Riordan & Dr. Naoisé O’Reilly transforming the World of business
Our Biographies at The Forever Method
Working with Clients who are older than you
Across My 4 different educational and business identities I work with Clients or Students from the ages 5 to well into their 70's. Recently I have been giving some thoughts to both the patterns of behaviour and pivotal moments in everyone's lives. You might find it starange that I can predict the pivatol moments in advance for many studnets or even know when their personalities will have truely developed so they will decide what they really want from life and what people they will choose to have in their lives, sometimes 10 or 20 years in advance of when I'm meeting them - it is joked that I am an oracle!
But another side of this for me is the fact that with Marie O'Riordan, The Forever Method, as we work together many times we work with business Clients across a whole spectrum of backgrounds, cultures, and ages we very regularly work with Clients much older than either of us. We are both in our 30's and yet here we are working with people who are traditionally seen at retirement age. How is this possible? There is that well know phrase you "can't teach an old dog new tricks". But it's not about new tricks, sometimes it is about reminding people about the tricks they can already do, the tricks they have forgotten or the tricks they always aspired to have and that maybe got lost in the day to day monotony of life. I have noticed a new wave of life and patterns in society in recent years and even recently a friend was talking about the older generation in their lives and how they have seen the same new wave. With divorce in western society has come a new generation of people who start their lives over again in their 40's and 50's and even 60's. It's like a second rebirth. One of the great benefits of working with two 30 year olds is that they still have that optimism for life. Everything is possible. You can be whatever you want to be and you become the people you hang out with. If you work with younger mentors they see you as fresh, not old. They ask you about all the dreams you had when you were 30 and why you didn't fulfil them. Now you have a second chance to do this. In short we can work with people older than us as we can make them remember what we have forgotten! In terms of what I believe, I feel everything in the world revolves around expression. What I am most interested in is making people express their dreams and desires for life. Interestingly I have attracted many older dyslexic business people in the same way as I attract them as students in my other projects.
Dr. Naoisé Expression Developist™
What can Profiling do for a Studnet’s Future Career?
This short video I recorded at the Irish Times Higher Options Conference in RDS explains why profiling is so important for Students early in their education life - You can pursue the Career you were born to do!
Extract of The Purple View
The Purple View Book Extract:
“Everything we do at The Homework Club is designed to create a learning environment that students can enjoy.”
In the initial interview I look for patterns in Life through sports, home and school. What you are really seeing is peoples natural tendencies. In an ideal World we shouldn’t realise that we’re learning at all. One of the difficulties that I have with the conventional system is that we try to stamp these out. A great example of this is the 4-year-old Kid who doesn’t read well but uses the pictures in the book to give them a sense of what the story is about. When someone covers over the pictures they take away this visual way of taking in information which is that natural tendency of a visual learner. So the next 3 chapters are going to talk about these 3 natural ingredients that everybody has - which are potential, personality and aptitude.
Blue represents a Person’s true nature and potential within. It’s seen to be the colour of faith, truth, confidence and being exceptionally deep in nature.
We use Red as it’s seen to be the colour of energy, happiness, passion, determination, love, power and desire. We tend to have very negative associations with personality expression in the conventional school model - the negative associations with red are anger. We see this side of the personality apparently when people feel constrained in their behaviour and self-expression.
We have now successfully combined potential, personalities and aptitudes into 4 simple ways of working. The next 3 sections in this book are going to describe the outcomes and amazing results that happen when you use this approach.
We use Yellow - Yellow is seen to be the colour of joy and intellect - we classically find people clever because of their skills - classically I believe we see people as “normal” when they have one of two multiply intelligence, linguistic or mathematical - these are what I generally assess. But I believe truly clever people have a grasp of their multiplicity. Your aptitudes alone are not enough to make you smart. You have to realise them and approach tasks in the best way for you.
The box - everyone has this idea that they would like to all “fit-in” and be the same as everyone else - it’s like a giant box we all belong to. So I decided with this method to create one “box” but the difference is that everyone is different in the box and has their own place. They can still be themselves while fitting in. I think of it more like a house with all the doors and windows open where everyone can just come on in - a box still seems a little constraining. But the yellow box in the middle of this picture is one where everyone can be happy as how they really are.
This yellow "box" for me is now the Expression Developist™ Concept, the next instalment of The Purple View that I am currently writing and will be available very shortly! Why we need a new objective in education.
In the mean time enjoy The Purple View. Link to The Purple View
Dr Naoisé O'Reilly (Expression Developist™)
Expression Developist™ – A new genre of education
Expression Developist™
A new genre of education. We focus so much on success of results - but what are results and what is success? What are the real points of learning?
Expression: It exists in all ways, verbal, mathematical, physical, artistic, interaction, emotional, musical, facial, genetically, kinaesthetically and so on. It is simply a way to communicate.
A Developist is someone who takes ideas that already exist but moulds and utilises them in a new profound way to help achieve new approaches, ideas, inventions, initiatives and many, many more possibilities. Taking the ideas of the world to a new place.
To very simply and importantly learn to express oneself in a way that takes them to success in whatever field they have aptitudes. Reaching your true potential by being able to communicate with the world in your unique way.
Your true expression will of course be fundamentally made up from your personality. No two people express themselves in the same way and hence no two people learn to do this in the same way. Expression is the fundamental basis for all education. On the flip side, Lack of expression can also be seen as the root of all difficulties within this environment.
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly (Expression Developist™)