As I was reviewing some closed discussions on the 688 discussion board, the Learning Styles construct keeps coming up. I’ve written about this in length here, and the link to the most comprehensive refutation is listed in this article:
Several of you have referred to “learning styles” in some of your posts and comments. I know it’s fashionable, but it’s also not supported by any credible scientific evidence. It’s intuitively appealing but it appears to be superstition. For a critique of the extant literature on this see:
Learning Styles.
The question often comes up, given my proviso regarding scientific evidence, “What would you consider credible evidence?”
Answer: Pretty much anything that actually establishes the hypothesis and goes about testing it. Key elements there involve showing that an individual student consistently learns “better” — presumably using some specified outcome assessment — using one mode over another. In order to justify the “Learning Style” theory, that individual student MUST show sigificant improvements across a wide variety of content areas delivered in a variety of modes and therein lies the rub. Whatever design this research takes, it must somehow tease out that causal relationship between the delivery mode and the outcome that’s independent from the repetition.
So? How do you prove that little Mary learns best by hearing? You can’t give her the same lesson in multiple ways, because then any measured improvement is confounded by repetition – which we know has an effect. Further, you can’t be sure that the recoding to cross media from – say – audio to visual is actually the same message so there’s the additional problem in interpreting the messages as to whether or not it’s the repetition, the encoding, or the “learning style” that made the difference.
And it gets more complicated when we factor in a variety of content domains. Teaching “visual learner” Tommy how to read visually is one thing. Teaching him volley ball is another. Credible research would have to account for that.
Yes, I know that learning style theory says that an individual cannot learn using another style, only that they learn best in one, consistent mode, regardless of content or context, and frankly, I’m not buying it. On its surface, there is an intuitive appeal, but when you get into the nuts and bolts of how this thing must have to work if individuals had “learning styles” it seems implausible.
October 15th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Morehead pounds learning styles into future teachers. I can’t even remember how many classes that I had that talked about learning styles. The school systems continue to have us test the kids for their learning style(s) and VARK is one of the popular tests. Where did the whole learning styles thing come from and why are they so important to identify if they can’t be backed up with scientific evidence?
I do think that some kids learn some things different than others, but I do not think that means that have a particular learning style. As teachers we need to teach using different approaches to give the students a chance to figure out what works best for them. I don’t think that we have to teach to their learning styles, we just need to teach what we know works. According to the lresults of some of the learning styles tests, I do not see any possible way to teach every lesson to all of the different styles. I just like to have a variety of teaching strategies in my room to keep things interesting.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
There’s an old joke about a guy who comes out of a bar late at night and finds one of the patrons crawling around on the sidewalk outside … “What ya doin?” he asks.
“Looking for my contact lens.”
The man bends down and helps search. After about 10 minutes he says, “You sure you dropped it here? I don’t see anything.”
“Oh, no! I dropped it back in the alley over there, but the light’s better here.”
That’s what Education is doing with learning styles. The school hammers it because it’s built into the KY state standards. The important thing to remember about state standards is that they’re based on politics, not research.
It’s easier to adopt something that looks good, even if it’s not backed up by any credible research, than it is to hammer out valid strategies for instruction. It would require much more work to approach instructional design in a mode that did not involve “one from column A, one from column B” strategies of design.
You’re right in that multiple modalities of instruction are important. Changing the expression of an idea often helps individuals make connections. Repetition and re-phrasing are important but it’s the repetition and re-phrasing that gets results which are often credited to “learning styles.”
October 16th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
OK. So what if there is no credible scientific evidence proving there are learning styles? That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Learning style is just a term coined for ways of learning. Do you agree that there are different ways of learning? To say that learning styles don’t exist is almost saying that multiple intelligences don’t exist either. All we have to do is observe our students and we can tell after a few days or weeks how they learn best. Those who have children of their own will know how they learn best. What works for one doesn’t work for everyone. If that were so, life would be much easier. My children learn differently. My oldest son learns by reading. If he reads it, he remembers it. My middle son learns by doing. He can read, but doesn’t like to. He would rather do something hands on. My youngest son is kinda a mixture of the two but is also different. He learns by reading, doing, and seeing. The term “learning styles” makes sense.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Ok. Lemme take these in order:
“Learning style is just a term coined for ways of learning.”
Actually, no. Learning style is a theory of learning that holds that an individual has a preference for one particular style of learning that is inherent in that individual. That preference — when exercised — is alleged to provide a significantly more robust learning outcome. The preference is independent of content and context as is the allegedly more robust outcome. This theory has no evidence to support it.
“Do you agree that there are different ways of learning?”
No. I believe the mechanism of learning is pretty well established by biology and psychology. I do believe that different encodings based on content, context, and learner can provide differing outcomes. I believe that motivation, activation, repetition and restatement are keys.
“To say that learning styles don’t exist is almost saying that multiple intelligences don’t exist either.”
No. Go back to Gardner and read some more. Learning styles and multiple intelligences are not related. They might look alike, but they’re significantly different. A person who has “math intelligence” does not learn best if you teach using a “math style” of instruction. They have a facility for learning math and for using that knowledge in ways that exceed what somebody with – say – “visual – spacial intelligence” might use. Moreover, Gardner holds that these are not mutually exclusive intelligences –unlike “Learning Styles” — but rather that different people have various levels of all of them.
“All we have to do is observe our students and we can tell after a few days or weeks how they learn best. Those who have children of their own will know how they learn best. What works for one doesn’t work for everyone.”
This is probably superstitious. I know when I am working with my own kids (10 and 13) what works in one context for a given daughter doesn’t work with the same daughter in another context. Neither has a learning style. What and how each learns varies by subject, mood, and – probably – diet. There is no consistency in that “style.” A good lesson is a good lesson and the best lessons use motivation, attention gathering, activation of existing knowledge, repetition and re-statement to achieve the goals that you’re attributing to “learning style.”
I know you think that learning styles exist, but so far, nobody has shown me any credible evidence that they do. Anecdotal exhumation of “this or that kid’s style” — even my own — do not constitute evidence of existence.
Reading by learning is not a “learning style.” Facility in dealing with written language is one of Gardner’s “intelligences” but does not constitute a learning style. It doesn’t work for things that are not significant when read. You can’t learn to ride a bicycle by reading Lance Armstrong’s memoirs. You can’t learn what Beethoven’s Fifth is about by reading a biography of Beethoven. You must listen to the music. Reading about his life may give insight and add extra connections for later learning, and as such, is a very valuable tool, but it’s not a “learning style” in VARK terms.
Your examples haven’t convinced me, because you’re confounding an established and accepted theoretical construct — Multiple Intelligences — with one that has not been shown to be more than simple pop-psychology.
January 28th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
[...] this one: Learning Styles, Again In order to justify the “Learning Style” theory, that individual student MUST show sigificant [...]