Another artifact of leftist thinking smashed:
If you’ve ever sat through a teaching seminar, you’ve probably heard a lecture about “learning styles.” Perhaps you were told that some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and others are kinesthetic learners. Or maybe you were given one of the dozens of other learning-style taxonomies that scholars and consultants have developed.
Almost certainly, you were told that your instruction should match your students’ styles. For example, kinesthetic learners—students who learn best through hands-on activities—are said to do better in classes that feature plenty of experiments, while verbal learners are said to do worse.
Now four psychologists argue that you were told wrong. There is no strong scientific evidence to support the “matching” idea, they contend in a paper published this week in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. And there is absolutely no reason for professors to adopt it in the classroom.
Consider an experiment about teaching the structure of complex molecules. The matching hypothesis might predict that kinesthetic learners would absorb the concept best by building ball-and-stick models in the lab, while verbal learners would do better by reading a few pages about the logic of molecular design.
That sounds intuitive. But according to Mr. Pashler and his co-authors, almost every well-designed study of that type has discovered that one instructional style actually works best for both groups.
In almost every actual well-designed study, Mr. Pashler and his colleagues write in their paper, “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,” the pattern is similar: For a given lesson, one instructional technique turns out to be optimal for all groups of students, even though students with certain learning styles may not love that technique.
Like water leaking out of a pipe…
Hat tip: Denis Dutton.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Learning is about solving problems. The nature of the problem defines the landscape. It matters not whether you’re better at mountain climbing or sprinting; if the flag you’re after is at the top of a cliff, you climb, not sprint.
I stopped believing in ‘studies’ years ago. They are always heavily manipulated to produce the results required by its authors.
The right and left are equally guilty of co-opting science for their crooked ends.
hoorah you’re reading aldaily, great site
Hunter:
I was reading Aldaily before reading Aldaily was cool.
When I was a TA in grad school, I was sometimes asked, “What is your philosophy of teaching?”
My answer: “I talk, they listen.”
Um, this isn’t an artifact of leftist thinking. The apparent misrepresentation and misapplication of Grinder and Bandler’s original NLP work might be closely correlated with leftism, yes, but I’ve learned to look very closely at any “research says” claims made by mainstream psychologists about NLP theories and presuppositions.
I’ve deliberately used VAK structuring to communicate ideas and points to people more successfully. I know it works because I’ve done it.
I’m also surprised at your extremely selective quoting of the article in question. And finally, from the comments there:
“Brain models and learning styles have, at least in my practice, demonstrated effectiveness for both the faculty and students issues that were otherwise ignored. In addition to having to prepare perfect lecturing content, it is imperative that you, as lecturer, be able to interpret the signs shown at the receiving party. Faculty who understand that all students may not receive the information the same way are able to adjust and lecture in different modes.
It is important that faculty know of the different learning styles and brain models of students to be able to adjust the lecturing style once students show signs of lack of understanding. It is as important for students to realize their learning styles to train themselves for better receiving of the information.
Lack of recognition from both the faculty and or students for their own learning/teaching styles of their own preferred mode will not facilitate the educational process. The identification process does not consume much time and aught to be performed early by both faculty and students.”
So I’m not the only one.
So this is one of ideas.. read part 3 before part 4
http://dissention.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/alternative-view-on-money-03/
and
http://dissention.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/alternative-view-on-money-04/
What I would be interested to know is this:
In studies which support the idea of different learning styles, how much of a difference does it make? I would guess that it doesn’t make much of a difference in comparison to (1) the intelligence of the student; and (2) the overall clarity of the lesson.
I would predict that if you have a smart teacher and a smart student, the student will usually learn pretty well no matter what the style of the lesson presented. On the other hand, I would predict that if you have a dumb teacher and a dumb student, the student will not learn very well no matter what the style of teaching.
So basically I suspect that talking about styles of learning has the effect (and probably the intention) of distracting people from the unpleasant truth that some children are more intelligent; some children are less intelligent; and less intelligent children don’t learn as well.
This is an artifact of the 4 years teachers’ colleges. They aren’t learning content but “how to teach”. They have to do something to fill up 4 years of student loan money. Changing the light ont he overhead projector is only worth 1 credit.
Obviously skills like welding and bricklaying should be taught tactilly and skills like analysis of 19th century British literature shuld be taught aurally.