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The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#81

Post by jldugger »

j10sanders wrote: post #61
innocentoldguy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment on being "focused." In analyzing my own learning preferences, I found it is much easier for me to stay focused if I can speed my way through something. Speed is the key for me, not the format. For example, if I have the choice to learn the same information via a video or book, I'd opt for the book because I know I can read a lot quicker than the person in the video is going to speak. This he…

I highly doubt you absorb much at 4-5x speed. 3x speed is very fast -- if the speaker talks quickly, it's borderline unintelligible.

It depends on practice. I'm at roughly 2x speed for podcasts, and a blind acquaintance I know hits 4-5x, especially for TTS.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#82

Post by oldmancoyote »

Bull Pucky!

Let me tell you my story. By third grade I could not read. I didn't get it. How could people remember all those words? Yet I had one of those off the wall IQs. In third grade they put me in Remedial Reading taught by Mrs. Gordon. If there is a Heaven, then there must be a special place in it for people like Mrs. Gordon.

Up until then we were supposed to learn to read by reading. It was the big thing then: learn to read the same way we learned to speak: by doing it. It worked for lots of kids. Not for me.

Mrs. Gordon taught me phonetics. That summer I was reading novels.

I once read a textbook on cognitive psychology. The author ranted about how awful phonetics was.

Clearly there are differences in learning styles. VARK appears to be wrong. It looks like too much thought and too little experimentation to me.

That doesn't mean there aren't differences in learning styles.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#83

Post by oldmancoyote »

clairity wrote: post #37
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, teach…

Meaning no disrespect my friend, but I disagree. See my post above for my experience trying to learn to read by experiencing reading. It didn't work for me.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#84

Post by conistonwater »

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…

What you're describing is usually called teaching methods, rather than learning styles. Teaching methods are real, figuring out which ones work best is a field of its own, like mathematics education research. But the article is specifically about learning styles, which is a specific term in psychology and a different idea. I think it's unnecessarily confusing to mix up the two, learning styles aren't real and definitely not a "misnomer".

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#85

Post by oldmancoyote »

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...

See my post at the current top of this thread. I could not read until I had a teacher who taught me phonetics.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#86

Post by andrewflnr »

I keep seeing these articles, but I think they're only debunking the craziest interpretation of learning style theory. Obviously it's not going to be perfect, and you're a fool to pigeon-hole yourself into one mode of learning. But there's too much anecdotal evidence to dismiss the whole idea. When I've raised this before, over person suggested that we view learning styles as deficiencies in particular modes of learning, rather than special abilities, which I think fits both the evidence and the overall theme of learning styles just fine.

People's brains are different, and learning is an important thing we do, so it should surprise no one when people learn differently. It should also surprise no one when those differences turn out to be complicated and hard to measure, just like our brains. So yeah, the pop psych version is over simplified, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#87

Post by kaycebasques »

conistonwater wrote: post #84
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…

What you're describing is usually called teaching methods, rather than learning styles. Teaching methods are real, figuring out which ones work best is a field of its own, like mathematics education research. But the article is specifically about learning styles, which is a specific term in psychology and a different idea. I think it's unnecessarily confusing to mix up the two, learning styles aren't real and definit…

Teaching methods are something I’m very interested in as a technical writer, and I’d love book / article recommendations.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#88

Post by conistonwater »

kaycebasques wrote: post #87
conistonwater wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is usually called teaching methods, rather than learning styles. Teaching methods are real, figuring out which ones work best is a field of its own, like mathematics education research. But the article is specifically about learning styles, which is a specific term in psychology and a different idea. I think it's unnecessarily confusing to mix up the two, learning styles aren't real and definit…

Teaching methods are something I’m very interested in as a technical writer, and I’d love book / article recommendations.

Something like this, it has further reading references at the end? http://www.md.utoronto.ca/sites/default/files/What_works%2C_...

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#89

Post by naasking »

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…

Just as a thought, just because it doesn't improve learning outcomes doesn't mean it doesn't improve the learning experience. There might be a qualitative aspect missing from dismissing learning styles. Even if learning styles only improve experience as a placebo/illusion of self-control.

Re: The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

#90

Post by Izkata »

> You can’t visualize a perfect French accent, for example.

Maybe not a "perfect" one, but you can visualize the sounds - pitch, hardness, etc. It's something I did back when learning Spanish to help memorize certain pronunciations. Think "maluma" vs "takete". But the shapes - which I'm hesitant to even call shapes - are extremely abstract, enough so it's not something I'd be able easily to draw on a piece of paper.

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