"Learning Styles" Debunked (Again)

[proud2BlibKansan]

The idea that teachers should present material to children in modes that best fit their "learning styles" is being disputed. As Yogi Berra famously said: It's déjà vu all over again.

The debunking is hardly new. A 2009 study from the University of South Florida found that there is no scientific evidence to support the popular idea that teaching should be differentiated according to whether a child is a visual or auditory learner, or absorbs ideas best when she's up and moving around while learning. (There are other learning styles, too, of course.)

The fact that the study is two years old didn't stop National Public Radio from airing a story about it today, though. They bring in cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham, who suggests that teachers are far better off learning about the cognitive processes human brains have in common rather than focusing on how they might be different.

It's not entirely clear to me what prompted NPR to call attention to the study now, but the "learning styles" theory, and what teachers do with it, is interesting and potentially significant enough to be worthy of a go-round whenever it crops up.

more . . . http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2011/08/learning_styles_theory_debunke.html

[SheilaT]

1. Interesting.

I's missed the debunking of different learning styles, but when I first heard about it I was a bit skeptical. Indeed, any good teacher will present material in more than one way, which covers the problem of "different learning styles".

Learning is not always easy. It actually takes effort to learn new stuff. I think one of the long term problems in our educational system is that the notion that learning ought always to be easy and fun has somehow taken hold.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. I ran into this video when I was researching this last year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk&feature=related


It's about the best explanation I could find re. what "learning styles" are and what they are *not*.

Gist: they exist; but their implications for classroom instruction are extremely limited.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Just like Madeline Hunter

A good idea twisted into overhyped nonsense.

[FBaggins]

4. And yet it continues to be a part of many M.Ed. programs

(Which may well be why the notion is slow to catch on).

The more recent research is also covered well in Ruth Clark's recent "Evidence-Based Training Methods"

The good news (IMO) is that there doesn't have to be much of an impact. If I once design a curriculum with multiple delivery modes (thinking that I'm meeting the needs of multiple learning styles), I don't have to redesign it significantly for this shift in perspective. The reason for this is that while we now "know" (until the next study comes out of course) that learning styles are bunk... we also know that just about everyone learns best from a multiple-mode delivery. Lecture combined with self study and small-group work and hands-on and video (etc etc) works better than just lecture. It may no longer be because people have different preferred modes of learning (as distinct from ability or so-called multiple intelligences), but it's still because nobody learns best with just lecture.

So if you're teaching elementary geography, don't think that you're wasting time by providing maps and videos and having them color-code a blank map or work on a puzzle, or or or. That's still the way to do this... just don't think that you're doing it because Johnny is a tactile learner so he'll "get it" when he works the puzzle and Sally is an auditory learner and will get it in the lecture. You do it because Johnny and Sally both learn better with the combination of delivery modes.

[txlibdem]

6. You are right on the mark. People learn better with a combination of delivery methods

I'd go a bit farther and say that most of the time should be controlled by the student, after as brief a lecture as possible, which will enable them to work out the details for themselves. The teacher should be a resource for them to discover the subject, but not the sole source of info.

Your last two paragraphs are gold.

My personal school experience was a total disaster until I took my education into my own hands and only used the in-class lecture as one of many resources. What really surprised me was that many of my teachers would routinely take class time to discuss at length the events of their personal lives.

[AdHocSolver]

5. The combined educational expertise of most professors in colleges of education...

...could be placed in a thimble with room to spare.


The organization and structure of schools were designed in the early 1900s to quickly mass produce minimally educated minions to man the factories and bureaucracies of the corporations and government.

Programs such as NCLB and RTTT demonstrate that The Powers That Be have not gotten beyond those aims for education.

The recycling of theories of education, most of which are pure bunkum, demonstrates that no significant advancement of educational practice has come out of colleges of education...or ever will.

The problem is not "good" versus "bad" teachers. The organization and structure of schools and curricula are antithetical, if not hostile, to real learning.

Education in America has regressed to the level of medicine in medieval times when leeches, purges, and dog urine were the mainstays of "healers".

[txlibdem]

7. "The problem is not good vs bad teachers" - Right on! This post is golden.

You and I know that it is the "organization and structure of schools and curricula are antithetical, if not hostile, to real learning."

What I can't understand are the throngs of ED minions who fight tooth and nail to defend the current system. The only thing I can think is that they are only thinking of their pay, benefits, and retirement packages. If they would take a step back and realize that reforming the public schools will SAVE their jobs, benefits and retirement then this idiotic slide toward private schools (statistically shown to do NO BETTER) could be slowed or even ended.