Learning style is the foundation of successful teaching and teaching for thinking. The recent conceptualization of the brain as a complex system for processing and storing information can be meaningful to educators. Too many schools, however, rely on a rather mechanistic approach to learning. Future school administrators must be taught to understand information processing as a part of learning. Most early research into learning style was too preoccupied with finding the one perceptual mode that would best increase learning or retention. In 1937, however, Allport coined the term "cognitive style," and research in this area expanded greatly after World War II. In the 1950s the term "learning style" began to be used in discussing the dynamics of groups at work, and current efforts to explain the underlying processes of learning reflect three lines of research, the first emphasizing the cognitive style; the second stressing students self-perceptions; and the third resting heavily on personality theory. In 1979, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) helped establish the National Learning Styles Network to study developing learning styles research. The Network proposed that all information must pass through an individual's information processing system to be learned, retained, and recalled. The Task Force adopted a research model in which learning style encompasses cognitive, affective, and physiological/environmental dimensions. The NASSP also developed the Learning Style Profile (LSP) designed to give teachers an easy way to determine learning styles in middle level and senior high school students. The LSP diagnoses student's cognitive styles, perceptual response tendencies, and study/instructional preferences. As a first-level diagnostic, the LSP can be used to create individual student profiles or group profiles that are useful in creating learning style-based instruction. Sample questions from the LSP are included. Contains 26 references. (JPT)