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6 Information Literacy for ­Today’s Diverse Students practical uses for ideas and theories and excel at completing technical tasks. They learn best by experimenting, participating in simula- tions, and applying what they learn in practical situations. • Accommodating: The dominant learning abilities for ­ these individuals are concrete experimentation and active experimentation. They depend on ­others to provide them with information and conclusions following analy­sis, rather than engaging in the logical analy­sis themselves. They prefer to learn by setting goals, testing dif­fer­ent approaches, work- ing with ­others to complete assignments, and engaging in hands-on experiences. An example of an affective model is the Grasha-­Riechmann Learning Style Scales, which uses three pairs of attitudes and be­hav­iors to describe students’ social interactions related to learning: avoidant or participative, competitive or collaborative, and dependent or in­de­pen­dent (Grasha, 1990). Participative students enjoy learning and fully involve themselves in all learning activities, tending to prefer the traditional instruction model. Avoidant students show no interest in attending class or engaging with the content. Competitive students are motivated by performing better than their peers, become more stimulated when competing against ­others, pre- fer a teacher-­centered instructional approach, and tend to dominate in-­ class discussions. Collaborative learners prefer to work with ­others to share ideas in small-­group discussions and accomplish tasks through group proj­ects. Dependent students show ­little intellectual curiosity and rely on ­others for guidance about what to learn and how to learn it, prefer- ring instructors to give clear assignment instructions and provide topic outlines and notes. In­de­pen­dent learners are confident of their abilities and prefer student-­centered instruction that allows them to work alone at their own pace. Deconstructing ­ these three learning style models raises a number of con- siderations for an instructor seeking to accommodate how vari­ous students best learn. One should think about how students’ senses are taking in and working through what is taught, how they experience it, how they logically analyze it, how they reflect on past learning experiences, ­whether they are actively making sense of it or expecting ­ others to give them the analytical conclusions, their degree of interest in learning, their preference to collab- orate or compete, and their desire to work in­de­pen­dently or not. If the tra- ditional lecture-­read-­write instructional approach is examined in the context of the VARK model, it satisfies the needs of aural and read-­write learners.