What characteristics of learners are relevant?

Human beings are almost infinitely diverse. They differ in overall intelligence as well as in specific abilities. Some have more background knowledge than others. Some have skills that other have yet to learn. Various researchers have divided people into different categories based on their learning styles, from reflective/impulsive to field dependent/field independent to visual/verbal/tactile and so on. Some learners are older; some younger. People differ in their motivation levels and foci as well as in their interests and the extent to which they care about different incentives, such as grades. 

Any particular group of learners (the target population) could differ from other groups along these dimension as well as along many others. In addition, target populations can differ in the range you find within the population on any of these dimensions. For example, if we look at engineering students as opposed to English students, we might expect to find that the engineering students are better in math: higher aptitude, more knowledge, more skills. We would also expect that the engineering students would be less variable on these traits. After all, there is nothing that would necessarily prevent an English major from taking math courses or otherwise being good in the subject. However, all engineering students, by definition, are going to be selected on the basis of their math aptitudes and backgrounds.

Since people have so many different characteristics, when we do a learner analysis we must be selective. Fortunately, many human characteristics simply do not seem to have much to do with teaching and learning. Whether a student has red or blond hair probably has little relationship to how they learn mathematics best (if you disagree, show me the research!). If you are teaching someone how to be a dental assistant, then you probably want to know about their ability to learn, their manual dexterity, even their squeamishness about working inside someone else's mouth rather than about their hair color, number of freckles, or many other traits.

It is important in our learner analyses that we concentrate on characteristics that make a difference for teaching and learning. Dick, Carey, and Carey list eight different categories of learner characteristics. You may not be able to identify important traits about your learners in all eight categories, but you should at least try. Can you think of other categories as well?