This! While my neuroscience education has been limited to books and journals, and I don’t have an advanced degree in neurobio, I have always been skeptical of this. Especially when a teacher uses a broad filter to “identify” students’ “learning styles”.
If anybody seen the movie Drumline with Nick Cannon it kinds of proves that people have different learning styles. He basically grew up playing drums by listening to the beat and following it basically.
Love that movie!
I disagree. I’ve seen the difference in the way my dyslexic, dyscalculic, and dysgraphic daughter processes information every day for many years. Different people’s brains process information differently. Yale’s Center for Dyslexia has some fascinating information on it. I think learning styles are just the names we’ve given to different ways of processing.
I know, from experience, that I’m a visual learner. I remember a great deal of what I read. I need to see written instructions to process them while my husband (also a dyslexic) would rather listen to them. If I learn that way, why wouldn’t I assume that there are other people like me?
I have a kid who knows that he is an auditory learner so he always goes to class, sits close to the front and listens intently and asks what he calls “clarifying questions” about anything that he’s unclear on. He says that just asking the question helps him to learn and of course the verbal answer solidifies things. He is also a musician. He does wonderfully on in class clicker quizes because her retains things the first time when he hears them.
I suppose in the reductionist frameworks of certain neurology, yes, all students see, hear, touch, etc the subject, but the article fails to cover to what degree they’re touching, seeing, hearing, etc, and how the researchers are splitting these elements rigidly apart in their research. Yes, all senses/faculties need to be utilized, but the direction in which these senses are utilized will determine how a student learns. You cant compartmentalize learning like these people are.
Edit: Read the article over again, turns out the article is actually revolting against the statement that ‘certain parts of the brain work better, therefore learning specialties’. They’re not arguing against learning styles that we’re familiar with, they’re arguing against the adolescent theory that some students are auditory learners because that portion of the brain just ‘works better.’
This may be true (from the article):
“We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning styles assessments into general educational practice.”
But, no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating formal assessments does not mean that mindful lesson planning and varying presentation methods won’t help a wider range of students to learn the material that you are trying to impart. Not being a neuroscientist, I won’t go so far as to say that a portion of the brain “works better” and that’s what accounts for different optimal learning styles, but I see them and experience them enough to believe that whatever their origin it can be worthwhile to take them into account.
One of my D’s has an almost photographic memory, but not great fine motor skills. One of her teachers made her class write out literally hundreds of flash cards with definitions. It was agonizing for her, because she had all of the vocabulary memorized but was struggling with the writing of the cards, and would get marked down for it. I could understand extra credit for writing of the flash cards, but that was so frustrating for her. And the same basic flash cards could be purchased for like $9, but that wasn’t allowed.
Still makes me mad!
I do not think that it is a myth. Some kids are learning better when explaining to others and other learn better from their peers. You can witness this dynamic in informal group studies and even considering the more formal, like Supplemental Instruction sessions run by current students. My D. was an SI for Chem. prof. She said that many of “her” students told her that they understand her better than prof. She herself told me many times that she understand material much better when she explains it to others.
Then considering that different subjects have different degree of difficulty to a specific student. For some calculus is horrific as I saw above and for others it is an easy A, while they struggle with History. Everybody has some kind of blockage in their heads, their mind is just closed to certain concepts. Of course, even the same person has to use different study “styles” or “techniques” in different classes.
Like fallenchemist, I find this article’s lack of statistics disturbing. The article isn’t about the study - it’s about a group of researchers saying “We carried out a study and proved that learning styles are bunk.” The writer doesn’t elaborate on the methodology of the experiments carried out, the results, or a potential scientific basis for those results. Nor does she elaborate on the basis and statistical evidence (or lack thereof) for the claim she believes has been debunked. We’re left with:
- Statistics showing how widespread the idea of learning styles is.
- An excerpt from a study's conclusions - meaning the author's interpretation of his findings.
- Quotes from a few researchers saying, in effect, "we believe learning styles are a myth."
I’m sure “The concept of general relativity is a myth.” would make a lovely headline. Maybe the resulting article could quote a summary of the available evidence like the one below:
“Although the literature on general relativity is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of relativity applied to physics. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict Einstein’s popular hypothesis. We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating general relativity into the study of physics.”
One of those studies could be as rigorous as “My buddy Jake spent 2 hours driving at 50 mph while I stayed home watching TV, but our watches still show the same time. The idea that time slows down at higher velocities is a myth, and general relativity is a load of bunk.” You wouldn’t know it from the article, or the summary it quotes.
I remember enjoying Dr. Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science. Maybe he should write a sequel - Bad Scientific Writing.
Let’s remember that not every type of learning takes place in a classroom. I’ll take it outside.
I have an MPH in Health Behavior & Health Education. I had to create and implement a LOT of different types of health education programs- for a whole range of audiences. I have never taken an education or psychology class and have never been formally taught about different learning styles. However, in my experience, I know that the health education methods I used had to be diverse in order to reach a wide range of people. For some, they just needed a handout with health information on it. Others needed to see visually how certain things worked. Still others needed things to be verbally explained to them. Different people needed different things in order for the information to sink in. Do I have hard data for this? No.
And then there’s the whole issue of individuals with varying levels of disabilities. For example, auditory learning doesn’t work especially well for me because I am hard of hearing. Austin brings up several others.
Well, first off, I had no idea that the website being linked to, “Quartz”, shifted their article formats like they do. So finding the article I talked about that used to follow the one the OP links has been impossible for me. I try all sorts of search terms that should bring it up, but no luck. Sigh.
But more important for this, I do wonder if this is another example of not setting definitions before beginning the study or debate. Here is what I mean. Suppose we could prove, without doubt, that one student was 60% efficient in audio learning and 40% efficient in visual learning. I realize that is super simplified, but that helps make my point. Now let’s also assume we can show that another student is the exact opposite, 60% for visual and 40% for audio. Would one researcher say they have different learning styles while another would say there are no differences in styles, just degrees of certain inputs? What happens when we take each input to the extreme of 100%? Does a deaf child have a different learning style, literally by definition, than a blind child? And remember this is greatly simplified. So unless there were clear definitions as to what constitutes “learning style”, this whole thing could be one group just talking right past the other.
Gardner’s work has been widely, and in some cases wildly, misapplied.
I love your story @movemetoo. My kids do not have photographic memories but say that they learn through the kinesthetic act of writing notes but never go back and actually use them to study. I used to fuss that their history notes (mandatory) weren’t even remotely legible. Both of them assured me that it was OK as they never used them anyway and just the process of doing it (or taking notes in class) was enough. Their grades bore that out, so it wasn’t just a ploy to hurry through.
Having read through the thread to this point, I find the definitions of the term “learning styles” to be…interesting.
The original article (or at least the scholarly review that the news stories are summarizing) is looking at a very specific definition of “learning styles”—the one you find used in the pedagogical research literature. Basically, it’s saying that some people are hard-wired to learn things more visually, or aurally, or kinesthetically, or somesuch. It is this that the research review found no evidence for.
On this thread, some people are using that definition for “learning styles”, but others are using it to mean that some students need different interventions for learning disabilities (e.g., dyslexia), or that some students have different talent sets (e.g., good mathematical reasoning skills). Others have used “learning styles” to refer to differences that are likely due to socialization rather than something innate (e.g., sex differences in achievement in various subjects). These are not what this review looked at.
Really, it would help if people were consistent in their use of what, for this thread, really is a technically defined term.
I am using to mean “hardwired differently”.
Fair enough. That’s not the definition that the referenced research is taking on, though—they’re dealing with a rather more narrow use of the term.
The reason dyslexics need different interventions is because their brains are hard-wired to learn things a certain way. Scans of their brains show specific patterns. The way they learn is due to the way their brains are wired.
I don’t think it matters if researchers haven’t found evidence yet to support that people are hard-wired to learn in different ways. The medical community spent a lot of years telling women that cramps were in their heads. They weren’t right about that either.
Calling the medical community untrustworthy is just a lazy argument that people like to use to say whatever unscientific health “fact” they want (e.g. vaccines cause autism! cell phones cause cancer!).
However, I agree that it doesn’t matter in practice because teaching things repeatedly is helpful to reinforce content, whether or not it’s taught in different “styles.” In case these styles really do exist, it makes sense for teachers to use multiple methods to teach material.
It makes sense for teachers to use multiple methods, period. The more areas of your brain that you use in making a memory, the deeper it gets engrained. Write it, say it, sing it, dance it. I make my students actually dance around the class singing about the earth’s rotation and revolution. They groan but I tell them about how their brain works, and that if their motor cortex (like a headband from ear to ear) is busy, and if their temporal lobes are busy, and if their visual lobes (words on the board) are busy, they will form stronger connections and remember more.