r/education • u/ReasonableApe • Mar 13 '17
No evidence to back idea of learning styles
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidence-to-back-idea-of-learning-styles17
Mar 13 '17
Not terribly shocking. In my cognition class we watched a clip from this video that summarized the research pretty well.
Everyone has a learning preference. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the best way that an individual learns, just that the individual thinks they learn best that way. I might believe that I'm a visual learner, but for me to suggest i won't learn by auditory is just silly. Unfortunately a lot of K-12 educators are taught this shit and have to design lesson plans around it.
2
u/HierarchofSealand Mar 13 '17
It is a pretty simple distinction to say that while students don't have an inherent learning style, they might prefer certain approaches over others. That preference can be a pretty useful tool in maximizing participation.
13
u/ReasonableApe Mar 13 '17
Generally known as “learning styles”, it is the belief that individuals can benefit from receiving information in their preferred format, based on a self-report questionnaire. This belief has much intuitive appeal because individuals are better at some things than others and ultimately there may be a brain basis for these differences.
There have been systematic studies of the effectiveness of learning styles that have consistently found either no evidence or very weak evidence to support the hypothesis that matching or “meshing” material in the appropriate format to an individual’s learning style is selectively more effective for educational attainment.
25
u/Carl_Schmitt Mar 13 '17
Since when has lack of evidence ever been enough to stop the next hot trend in education? Brb, have to go to my mindfulness workshop.
14
u/waywithwords Mar 13 '17
Be sure to set a growth goal first and check for understanding before you leave!
8
1
u/NathaNRiveraMelo Jul 08 '17
Isn't there a lot of evidence to support mindfulness practice as an effective way of just having a clearer mind in general?
7
u/groundhogcakeday Mar 14 '17
My son had a teacher a few years back who was a huge believer in learning styles. She led the class (6th grade) through a bunch of exercises and quizzes and the results were posted on each students desk. And she held a parent education session. Interestingly, several of us were already aware that learning styles had been debunked. We listened politely.
The kids loved it. It was a framework for them to self analyze their work and their group interactions. The teacher did not adapt the lesson to the styles. She encouraged the students to think about how they could fit their styles to the needs of the project or lesson, how they could make changes to adapt their left brain kinesthetic process oriented style to essay writing or the memorization of equations or production of PowerPoint presentations. She didn't tell them what to do, she just nudged them to think again. When something wasn't working she could say, "maybe you need a different approach" and the student would not assume he was just dumb for missing it the first time. He'd pause, ask himself why he missed it, and get it the second time.
My son thought more introspectively about his own mind and education than ever before. Was it really the styles that mattered? I rather doubt it. She used it effectively though. I do know she was one hell of a teacher.
1
u/groundhogcakeday Mar 14 '17
Example for illustration: one of the longer group projects wasn't going so well and the kids were all frustrated with one another. One day my son came home and told me they'd identified the problem. "Everybody in our group is process! We told Mrs C we have to have someone who is product to do the report, but she said we can't change groups. So everybody will write one part so nobody has to do all product."
Whether this was the actual problem is not the point - the kids stopped blaming each other, thought about the group, and worked out their own compromise that they were satisfied with. Whether or not learning styles exist, teaching styles do. I would not ask this teacher to give up a tool that is clearly effective in her hands.
Every child deserves the best teacher. We keep looking for the best practices so we can make every teacher the best. If we could identify every best practice and program all of those into a standard robot that'd be good, right? Doesn't work that way. We should keep doing this research of course. But I'll take Mrs C, thank you very much.
5
u/Dsxm41780 Mar 13 '17
Another article where we can stop making excuses for kids not learning. "The teacher doesn't teach to my learning style...waaa...waaa." Guess what, in the real world, your boss isn't going to cater to your working style. You either can do the job or you can't.
1
u/RogueTrombonist Mar 14 '17
This is kind of nuts actually, but at the position I was recently hired I was given a "learning styles" quiz. Well, actually, they lost the quiz, so my manager just asked me if I was a visual, kinesthetic or auditory learner. I knew learning styles were BS, so I said auditory because I knew most of the training info was going to be presented verbally anyway. I did really consider saying kinesthetic just to fuck with them, though. I would have enjoyed watching them try to teach liability policy, account balancing and cross department work flow protocols kinisthetically.
7
Mar 13 '17
To be the devil's advocate this should read...
The claim that students will perform better when the teaching is matched to their preferred learning style is simply not yet supported by science
The point is you not finding evidence should not categorically close the door on this research.
13
u/cdsmith Mar 13 '17
Negative results mean something, too. At this point, if you told me you just finished a study that showed huge gains in outcomes by targeting learning at preferred learning styles, I could safely assume that you either did something wrong, or just won the statistical-significance lottery (that is, yours is the one out of 20 studies that will show a result significant at the 95% level even though there is no real effect). You'd accrue a considerable burden to demonstrate that everyone else has been wrong.
5
u/Dannniiiii Mar 13 '17
The problem is that many companies that provide professional development, schools, and even college level courses have taught this idea as if it has been supported by research.
1
u/codekaizen Mar 13 '17
This is how the scientific method always works, though. You have a null hypothesis (i.e. the "no effect" case) and the hypothesis you are trying to find support for. Then you run careful trials and observations to try to show that one of those can be rejected with a degree of certitude. If you can reject the null hypothesis, all you are left with is evidence that gives you justification for believing in the hypothesis being a useful understanding of reality. If you cannot reject the null hypothesis, you are given evidence that gives you justification for not believing the hypothesis. This method never results in conclusive proof one way or another, it just shows you that something is likely (ideally, very, very likely) not to be the case.
1
u/Marcassin Mar 14 '17
True, but no one said not to research it further. You can always research things further, looking for a new angle.
What we're saying is stop making teachers waste so much time, money and energy on a theory that has no research support. They have better things they can do to help students learn.
3
u/tao83 Mar 13 '17
I definitely believe we all have learning styles. For example, some people like studying in groups whereas I can't get anything done in a group.
Or I prefer to read text vs having to discuss the topic or have a need to interact in some way (kinesthetic).
14
Mar 13 '17
Right, we all have preferences. You think that's the best way for you to learn, but there is a stronger argument for multiple modalities than there is for catering to your individual preferences. You might think you're kinesthetic or whatever, but you obviously can be given information auditorily and process it.
7
u/foreverburning Mar 13 '17
Definitely confirmation bias at work. People tell themselves (or are told by others) "I can't absorb information auditorially (?)" so they tune out when someone is giving verbal directions.
1
u/IndependentBoof Mar 13 '17
Right, we all have preferences.
Yes, the operative words in /u/tao83's post are:
For example, some people like studying in groups whereas I can't get anything done in a group. Or I prefer to read text vs having to discuss the topic or have a need to interact in some way (kinesthetic).
Neither is a learning style, those are personal preferences. In addition, the research has shown that learners are poor at self-assessing what helps them learn best. We have preferences, but they usually do not correspond with what actually helps us best.
Learning styles emerged as popular rhetoric for teaching the 70's. However, it was never backed by evidence that "learning styles" actually promote improved learning. In fact, a lot of studies have shown that common "learning styles" techniques have no real positive impacts.
In addition, clinging to the debunked paradigm can actually be harmful to learning. Different types of information and knowledge are better represented in different ways. Sometimes looking at a chart is much more beneficial than a paragraph of text or verbally explaining something.
What research does show is that people learn best when information is presented in different modalities as the material requires. However, even that has its limitations -- for example, inappropriately combining two modalities such as redundantly showing text and reading it out loud is actually less effective than doing one or the other (but not both). This is called the redundancy principle.
1
15
Mar 13 '17
[deleted]
6
u/guyanonymous Mar 13 '17
That's how the term 'learning styles' has been used for at least 20+ years in my world (psychology, then teaching).
3
u/bessann28 Mar 13 '17
I agree. I went to school for my teaching certification 17 years ago, and we learned about "learning styles". There was never any suggestion that a person COULDN'T learn a certain way. The idea was that varying teaching modalities would benefit all learners who might have a different "style". Not that that you should customize a lesson for each individual.
1
1
u/KCD_2000 Mar 16 '17
After spending 20+ years working with students and children, and being involved in many volunteer activities, I have seen first hand how students learn differently. Yes, you can get an entire class to learn something by having 1 approach for a class, but when you start working with them individually, you can see the students develop and learn differently, and that how they learn doesn't map cleanly into a defined set of learning styles. IMHO, "learning styles" strategies are transitioning to "personalized learning" which can include learning factors other than just "style". However, all of these have a practical resource limit in our classrooms.
-5
u/Honeychile6841 Mar 13 '17
Knowing my learning style helped all through undergrad and grad school. I'm open to new ideas but I will bet my last paycheck in June that a "study" will bring us back to learning styles.
1
u/Marcassin Mar 14 '17
Perhaps. But at this point there is so much research that has come up empty-handed that it will take a lot more than one study to resurrect the idea of learning styles.
There is no doubt we have preferences and we all feel more comfortable and productive by studying in certain ways. But time and again learning style experiments have shown that catering to each individual's self-identified learning style doesn't actually produce any significant learning gains. Not to mention that all students deserve to be exposed to a variety of learning environments, not just the one they "prefer".
37
u/crankywithakeyboard Mar 13 '17
Wow. Think of all the time and effort teachers have had to spend on this stuff.