Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 104 posts

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#31

Post by balabaster »

leetcrew wrote: post #13
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #3

If I had a nickel every time a student came up to me and said, "I'm an x learner and your class is very y," I'd have a lot of nickels. Every single time what they really mean is, "I'm doing terrible in your class, and even though it's probably my attitude or study habits or preparedness, I'm going to blame you."

i do actually learn best by reading. if the professor produces a set of authoritative notes for the class, i will get an A on every exam. as long as the professor makes it clear exactly what sections of the text are important, i will learn everything and still get an A every time. if the professor says important stuff during lecture that cannot be read somewhere, i have no chance of retaining that information.

Conversely, I retain almost nothing I get from books. But if you can explain something so I actually understand it, I don't even need to revise come exam time. If I understand it, or at least well enough to reconstruct a complete understanding on the fly, then I'll ace the exam. If you expect me to try and learn it from a book, I'll still do okay, but it'll take me 10 times longer to learn it.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#32

Post by graphitezepp »

nategri wrote: post #2

Since it's an identity thing, I'm guessing people are not going to want to let this one go. Just like they won't let go of their identity as a Meyers-Briggs I-N-T-whatever-the-hell, even though there's zero evidence for it as a meaningful framework.

Great point, I would have never considered that myself since I never took the concept personally.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#33

Post by PowerRangError »

I don't care who calls what a myth. I'm different, and I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm special.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/226886/origin-of...

This doesn't apply to me, now even 40 years later. I hear and I remember, I see and I forget. The doing part is correct enough.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#34

Post by dbatten »

lr4444lr wrote: post #26

Every time someone someone tries to sell me on this tired idea, I ask them: if you had to teach someone the difference between different bird calls, e.g. that of the robin vs. the sparrow, and you're told that person is a "visual learner", do you mean to tell me you'd opt to show them the oscilloscope representation of the sound wave that each bird makes rather than playing them an actual recording of each call? It's…

Your point is well made, but it's amusing that you use "proven phonics methods" as an example of something that's obviously the best way to learn something... Apparently, there's very heated debate on that subject. (News to me, as of a couple months ago.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/the-rea...

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#35

Post by virusduck »

nategri wrote: post #2

Since it's an identity thing, I'm guessing people are not going to want to let this one go. Just like they won't let go of their identity as a Meyers-Briggs I-N-T-whatever-the-hell, even though there's zero evidence for it as a meaningful framework.

I've found that M-B or the like is really useful to give people words to talk about who they think they are (which can be incredibly difficult without some starting point). When you have words to describe something, you can start to talk about it and in this case, how your personality interacts with others. That is, where are there things in the ways others describe themselves that you recognize in yourself or that you find entirely foreign. Then, you can ask how can recognizing these types of differences help you get along better.

I don't see M-B as a scientific readout, but it is helpful in giving tools to help people relate. It's only difficult when folks go off the deep end ("Aw shit, I'm a Hufflepuff!" syndrome) .

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#36

Post by ben509 »

nategri wrote: post #2

Since it's an identity thing, I'm guessing people are not going to want to let this one go. Just like they won't let go of their identity as a Meyers-Briggs I-N-T-whatever-the-hell, even though there's zero evidence for it as a meaningful framework.

Identity is social... if you make a friend because you're a Pisces or whatever nonsense, regardless, that friendship is entirely real.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#37

Post by clairity »

npudar wrote: post #4

Around 20 years ago, I met Dawna Markova at a conference where she spoke about the work she had done in learning styles. My recollection is that the Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic forms was not about how you "learn", but rather on how you stay "focused". Researchers found that there were three brianwave patterns that corresponded to your level of focus. For me, Visual stimuli kept me focused. Auditory stimuli pract…

as a complement to that perspective, i think we're all basically experiential learners, and seeing, hearing, and touching/moving are simply parts of the "experience". sure, one person might focus a little more on the voice of the speaker, and another might be watching more intently, but all of those components combine to create the immersive experience that locks new information into our brains. but as you say, teaching should incorporate mutiple modes of stimuli, because all learners need all of the modes.

incidentally, that's why most conferences and such gatherings are not so useful for learning new things--they're designed so that people talk at you, rather than involve you. the purpose is often to display the superior knowledge/ability of the speaker, for various commercial purposes (having been on both sides of this).

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#38

Post by dhimes »

I don't know if 'learning styles' are a thing or not, but I will point out that there are two broad categories. The first, which is often refuted in studies like these, I think of "sensory input" learning styles. The VARK (there are others) are basically, roughly, talking about how we get information into our brains. More or less the five senses.

More interesting to me are a second group, the cognitive learning styles, such as http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Lea...

These are more about the mental processing that goes on. Are you better at learning one step at a time, or do you need to get the "big picture" before the steps even make sense and are somewhat tractable to you?

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#39

Post by pphysch »

reitanqild wrote: post #28
lr4444lr wrote: post #26

Every time someone someone tries to sell me on this tired idea, I ask them: if you had to teach someone the difference between different bird calls, e.g. that of the robin vs. the sparrow, and you're told that person is a "visual learner", do you mean to tell me you'd opt to show them the oscilloscope representation of the sound wave that each bird makes rather than playing them an actual recording of each call? It's…

> Every time someone someone tries to sell me on this tired idea, I ask them: ... Now it might be time to turn the table and ask: is it equally easy for everyone to learn bird calls? Or maybe people have different abilities? Edit: my point is not that this hasn't been used to sell a lot of useless ideas but rather that people are actually different. For your bird call example the obvious way to learn it is by listeni…

"Learning history" is an interesting example.

As far as actually studying history goes, one needs to carefully examine real evidence, and restructuring the evidence in a way that is appealing to the observer's "style" is almost certainly damaging to its authenticity. To a large extent, user preference shouldn't even be a factor here.

OTOH, "textbook history" is, bluntly, mostly about memorizing fact/oids embedded in a highly curated narrative. That a dyslexic student has trouble finding the needle in the haystack isn't surprising, but to me it suggests that we shouldn't have students digging in haystacks in the first place. I'm certain that a more topographically-simple representation of the "historical facts" would be beneficial to all parties.

More charitably, though, part of the goal of reading textbooks is to develop textual parsing (reading) skills, so again if you take that away from a dyslexic student, what are you really trying to accomplish as an educator? Making them feel good? FWIW, I have a friend who was very dyslexic, but managed to overcome it in high school, not coincidentally while he was taking a series of relatively rigorous history classes that involved a lot of reading and writing--now he reads a hell of a lot more than me. YMMV, of course.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#40

Post by turingcompeteme »

My SO teaches elementary math, and we've had a few discussions about this.

When teaching a new concept, say the area of a parallelogram, she will present the concept in multiple different ways:

- Give printouts of parallelograms on graph paper, so the students can count the number of squares in a parallelogram. Also give them scissors and see what happens.

- Give students two triangles and a square (which they know how to get the areas of already), as well as some tape.

- Simply give students the length of the base, height, and the area of multiple parallelograms.

The interesting thing is that there will be a somewhat equal split among which way makes the concept click for the students. Some will instantly start counting squares on graph paper and figure it out. Some will tape the different shapes together and go from there. Others will play with the base and height numbers and arrive at a formula.

So while "learning styles" may be a misnomer, I do believe that presenting one topic in a variety of ways is beneficial.

Post reply on HN