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The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#41

Post by moate »

dhimes wrote: post #38

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 style…

I think it's hard to refute the idea that "certain people do better learning certain things in certain environments." It's hard to figure out which levers should be used (change the people? change the material? change the learning environment/teaching style?) to best educate.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#42

Post by danielford »

This is a good article, but it only touches on the main issue with learning styles. Multiple independent groups of educational psychologists (if I remember correctly it was three) reviewed all the articles they could find on learning styles. They found that the majority of the studies had poor experimental design, since they were missing proper control groups. Of the remaining studies there were more examples of negative results for learning styles than positive results. This was pretty damning, given the publication bias for positive results in academic research. The article links to one of these reviews, but here is another one: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3....

I teach science, and it's frustrating that nearly all of my students can tell me their learning style. Their previous teachers have taught them about learning styles as a way to improve their studying, and they've jumped on that information. But the literature indicates that matching instruction to a learning style doesn't improve learning. This is a total waste because we're effectively giving students a magic talisman to help them learn science, because once students find out it's wrong they'll be less likely to take our advice on studying, and because the time we waste on it could be spent on telling people about real things that actually improve learning.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#43

Post by [deleted] »

turingcompeteme wrote: post #40

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 h…

[deleted]

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#44

Post by lr4444lr »

dbatten wrote: post #34
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...

My wife is a reading instructor. I myself was a licensed teacher in a former life. Phonics is not the totality of reading education, but it's definitely core and dominant. The article you cite speaks to a political controversy, not a pedagogical debate backed by conflicting data.

Point me to the body of research on whole-language or some other approach as the dominant way to teach reading (basic reading to early primary grades, that is) and at least one school district that definitively promotes it as the dominant way, and I'll seriously reconsider that it hasn't been debunked.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#45

Post by alarge »

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…

I have what (may be?) a counter-example. I'm a moderately accomplished amateur musician. I play the trumpet in an orchestra and sing in a chorus. Both the orchestra and the chorus consist primarily of amateurs.

The director of the chorus is adamant about having it be open to anyone in the community, regardless of their musical background. To support that (laudable, IMO) position, he attempts to teach the music by ear. He makes sheet music available, but highly discourages using it during rehearsal. What I have found is that I simply cannot learn music by ear - at least not in any reasonable length of time. I eventually memorize the music, but my memory of it is as visual (I remember what the written music looked like) as it is aural.

When digging into this further, I realize that there's a pattern here - tell me a name and I'll immediately forget it. But if I see it (also?) on a name tag, I'm much more likely to remember it. I have many other similar examples.

Other members of the chorus have thus labeled me as a "visual learner" rather than an "aural learner".

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#46

Post by wolco »

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…

If you had to teach someone to tell the difference between bird calls. A percentage of people would prefer to see the visual outputs vs hearing the sounds.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#48

Post by bluetwo »

danielford wrote: post #42

This is a good article, but it only touches on the main issue with learning styles. Multiple independent groups of educational psychologists (if I remember correctly it was three) reviewed all the articles they could find on learning styles. They found that the majority of the studies had poor experimental design, since they were missing proper control groups. Of the remaining studies there were more examples of nega…

I thought this idea was dead. No one I know that design instructional materials (of which I know many due to my background) thinks this is real.

Sorry to hear it still survives.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#49

Post by reificator »

turingcompeteme wrote: post #40

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 h…

You might like Lockhart's Lament: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#50

Post by dhimes »

danielford wrote: post #42

This is a good article, but it only touches on the main issue with learning styles. Multiple independent groups of educational psychologists (if I remember correctly it was three) reviewed all the articles they could find on learning styles. They found that the majority of the studies had poor experimental design, since they were missing proper control groups. Of the remaining studies there were more examples of nega…

The studies I have seen (I'll admit- I didn't read TFA- maybe I have in the past idk) all used some sort of survey to identify learning styles. Nobody, to my knowledge, has measured learning by modalities to identify them.

You are spot on that attempts to match instruction to learning style have been futile in the VARK-like learning style classifications. They also assume that if a student has a learning style, it will be the same across subjects. If it turns out there is such a thing as learning styles I woudn't be at all surprised if it varied by what you are learning.

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