Dear Carrie,

As you know our inquiry project in your class must be connected to the different elements of learning and education that we have learned about and discussed during this semester. I know most people are writing about standardized testing or the effects of extra circular activities on students school work but I would like to take my research a different direction. I would like to research how different training/learning styles effects horses. I know we have talked about the banking method and the problem posing method in Horace Mann and Freiers articles and I can see a correlation between the ideas they had and some of the ideas I am planning on exploring. I want to see if different types of training styles effect horses as the banking method and problem posing effect students.

I have always had a passion for horses growing up and have been riding since I was six years old. When I was fourteen I started working for the equestrian center that I had been taking lessons from growing up. As I got older, and worked more one on one with different horses, I became interested in learning how to train and break new horses and teach other people how to ride. Most people do not know but all horses have their own personality just as people do. Some are shyer while others are outgoing and they are all driven by different things such as food, affection, and play. The more I noticed this, the more it made me question if all training styles work for all horses. We know that people have different learning styles, such as auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic, but how do we know that humans are the only ones who learn differently? This is what I want to explore more and possibly find a way to improve training and hopefully improve the relationships between the trainer/owner and the horse by finding the more

efficient training style for each individual horse.

To start my research process I am going to do some research and find the main training styles used by trainers and owners. I am going to find the origin, the credibility of the creator for each training technique and the success rate for each one. I am also going to try and find how long each training style takes to start making an improvement in the horse based on what their learning style is and what motivates them. It will be no problem to start my primary research, since my place of employment has different types of training and a variety of horses that obviously have many different learning styles themselves. For my primary research I am going to observe different training styles and interview the different trainers and owners involved.

Some of the questions to guide my research will include: Can you tell what motivates different horses? Do the horses respond different to different training techniques? Will a horse respond negatively if you change the training style? Will they respond positively? These are just a few of the questions that will help direct my research for this inquirer paper. I look forward to talking to you more about my ideas and hearing your thoughts on my research.

Sincerely,

Meredith Higginbotham