Today, there is little deviation from the standard, business-as-usual practices in the world of education. What If? challenges these stale practices and asks the important questions that can improve schools beyond the current state of mediocrity. Written for administrators, supervisors, teachers, parents_even politicians and corporate executives_this book provides more than 25 specific problem-solving strategies for improving education without increasing costs. Rita Dunn and Shirley A. Griggs use more than 40 years of background in education, as well the renowned Dunn and Dunn Learning Style Model, to focus on the ways in which we can truly improve schools. The model, which identifies elements within environmental, emotional, sociological, physiological, and psychological domains, reveals how individuals best understand and retain information. This basis is then applied to the What If? situations to unearth the most promising practices for school improvement. What If Students Were to Write Their Own Honor Code? What if Principals Understood Each Teacher's Learning Style? What If Parents Knew How to Help Their Children Study at Home? These are just a few of the important situations analyzed by this book. The appeal is clearly widespread and covers the concerns of nearly every essential action-oriented community stakeholder group.

Dunn and Griggs challenge the traditional instructional process of lecture/discussion in college classroom and describe the theory, practice, and research that support a wider variety of approaches to better accommodate the learning-style preferences of each student. Twenty-five practitioners from varied backgrounds and disciplines, representing 14 colleges and universities, outline alternative strategies they use with diverse students in their institutions of higher education. Some of these practitioners have been using learning-style for decades. Others have conducted research to test the various tenets of the Dunn and Dunn Learning- Style Model, and a few, only for the past five years, have begun providing instructional strategies that are congruent with their students' preferences.

A road map is provided for college faculty to assist them in moving toward accommodating students' learning-style strengths by comparing the major theories of learning styles that range from uni- to multi-dimensional in scope. Strategies include: identifying and administering valid and reliable instruments for assessing college students' learning styles, interpreting assessment results so that each student becomes aware of his/her own strengths and is provided a computer-generated prescription for improving their study skills and successfully completing assignments, designing instruction to respond to both global and analytic students' processing styles, developing course content and materials to accommodate the learning-style preferences of college students, and evaluating the impact of learning-styles-based instruction.

This text synthesizes the research on the learning style characteristics of five culturally diverse groups: Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and European Americans. Although each of these groups has distinguishing features and differs from other groups on some of the 22 elements that constitute learning style, there are broad within-group variations that preclude generalizations. Dunn and Griggs identify a multidimensional model of learning style, describe a comprehensive assessment instrument for identifying an individual's learning style, and provide a variety of educational interventions that accommodate diverse learning style preferences.