Wed 5 Aug 2009
Debunking the Learning Styles Myth
Posted by dcatsam under Academia, General, Academics, Teaching at 5:01 pm
One hears it all the time: “Oh, I’m a visual learner.” Education theorists have promulgated this idea, and students have embraced it because, generally speaking, students like built-in excuses. Leaving aside the fact that reading is a visual learning style (at least it starts with the eyes) that these theorists always exempt from these discussions (from what I can tell “visual learning” means watching videos and the affront to humanity that is PowerPoint).
But I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that this argument is nonsense, that delineating the different styles of learning into separate categories is both a fool’s errand and obfuscutory. Thankfully, I now have a pretty heavy hitter to back me up. University of Virginia (Wahoos!) cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham has done a pretty good job of debunking “the learning styles myth” in, among other places, his new book, Why Don’t Students Like School?
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17 Responses to “Debunking the Learning Styles Myth”
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PTC says:
Derek- While naming the styles of learning and teaching may not capture an “exact science”, I think there is value in recognizing that there are audio, visual and tactile techniques employed in teaching, and that recognition of “something like that” can serve as a tool to help manage curriculum and teach effectively. This is especially true if you are teaching a person or group how to do something practical, like a class on how to build a fire, for example.
dcatsam says:
PTC –
Fair enough, I suppose. I’d strongly suggest reading a lot of the links that you can access from the links I gave. Pretty much the worst thing a teacher can do, by the evidence, is try to cater to the so-called “learning styles” as just about every study has shown that it simply does not work. Leave it to the educational theorists to try to make a fetish out of common sense — yes, showing someone how to build a fire is more useful than just telling them. Which does nothing for me when Johnny insists he fucked up the exam because he is a visual learner and thus could not take all those damned notes during the lectures.
dcat
PTC says:
dcat- Well, let’s suppose you are teaching a class on the civil war, and during that class, you are afforded the opportunity to take your students to several battlefield sites and re enact the various battlefield leaders strategies and movements?
Or perhaps, do it on a sand table with plastic toys on a scaled scene? Don’t you think that would add to retention, or perhaps change the dynamics of the student’s retentions- beyond just having them read about it for the same amount of time?
Now do all three… reading, visual lecture with power point and pictures… and sand table where they act out the various Generals movements while talking about the history of the campaign, using the generals biography in context to explain the action… etc. I think if you use the “learning styles” theories as a tool… it can help you create a more interesting learning module or class.
kthomas says:
Derek,
You should see me raising my hands in frustration.
“In my professional life,” shall we say… I’m not going to give you a long analysis. But this is the South as well, and I’m constrained by not being able to say anything that might seem to speak about any particular individual.
I recently saw “Gone with the Wind” again, a movie whose representations are so odd, and there is the point at which one of the ex-slaves declares “we can’t milk a cow; we’re house workers.”
Mix that attitude– which I’d like to be clear, I’d like to separate from any simplistic black/white notion of race– with the sort of permissive, affirmative nature of education–
well, I’ll use a quote which may be dangerous, — I’m thinking of a 30-year-old making $8/hr, declaring “I learn better by doing” which meant something like “hold my hand through my every task.”
I’ll stop there, as anything else really threatens to be beating the same horses. Thanks for the post.
kthomas says:
PTC & Derek:
Cross-posting going on here.
I believe Derek hit it with “cater to.”
The Civil War example you give is great– an example of using multiple modalities and media.
However, my experience is “more basic,” I’d say, when a claim of “I learn better like” x,y, or z is used to derail a preplanned process, or the path to a goal.
Think of it as marching across the desert with a guy who says “I march better in wool socks, and on grass,” or, — an example from the 101st– a guy in basic training who, every time his instructor tells him “run over there,” asks “why?”
The path of instruction may not be the best– in something like languages, I could point out that it may not be “right”– but it’s the path, and there is something called “discipline.”
I believe one thing we’re talking about is “learning style” substituting for “lack of discipline.”
Derek says:
PTC –
I think you are confusing a more colloquial usage of “styles of learning” with a more formalized language that education theorists would use and that the psych people are talking about. The Civil War Battlefield is a good example — of course any professor uses different teaching approaches, methodologies, even, yes, “styles.” Bt there is no foundation, it seems, for a student to say “well, the only way I can learn this Civil War stuff is to go to a battlefield. A good professor will mix up styles, used informally, and will do different things to attract the tastes and also to inspire the interest of students as well as to try to get at questions. But that is rather different from a formalized seven types of learners, Oh, I’m a visual learner nonsense that becomes a crutch for people who have erroneously been told that lecturing is bad, or that group projects are the best, or that PowerPoint is the preferred way of doing things.
I very much agree with Ken. Students too often — and let’s be clear here, when I write these kinds of posts I am thinking about academic culture more broadly, as little of this nonsense goes on at Williams — simply think that they can opt out of various components of getting a college education. So we are told that online teaching lets them learn at their own pace, lets them use the tools of the modern age, and all that. We are told that there are styles of teaching — that students today respond better to PowerPoint than to a lecture with the occasional doodle on the board. Yet there is no evidence for — and increasingly there is evidence against — these sorts of assertions. And naturally all of these assertions are geared toward avoiding certain other things — Hell yes, let’s go to Antietem. But you’re still reading McPherson. Let’s watch Burns. But you’re still going to hear me lecture. Let’s have a discussion on the reading. But you’re still going to write the paper. Let’s go on this side path that you raised. We’re still going to get back to the original question. Look it up on Google? Ok, but you’re still checking for journal articles on J-Stor.
This is the issue. “Styles of learning,” informal? Sure. “Styles of learning” as an actual scientific phenomenon? Nope. So pick up your damned pen and take some notes.
dcat
Larry George says:
Informal and not as an excuse, but as a path to becoming a stronger student. Yes.
And every student should find (best if with parents’ and teachers’ help in the beginning) what helps him or her learn, understand, and retain a subject best. For example, talk numbers to me, without my either writing them down or being shown them, and it quickly becomes noise to me; let me get at them combining hearing and seeing them and I am good to go.
With the students I have tutored, I have tried a combination. We searched for and reinforced the techniques that helped them with their work. I also insisted that those were supplements and that they should work at mastering techniques that were uncomfortable to them — I did that because I did not want the latter techniques to atrophy, like some unused muscle; because I wanted them to be open to a variety of techniques; because people and skills change over time, developmentally; because I wanted them to feel strong in broad, multi-faceted ways; because I didn’t want them to have a “crippled” self-perception; and because I wanted them to be able to do things the way other people did (which can be important for working in groups) and not have a view of themselves as rarified. The results were mixed. It was uncomfortable learning. It succeeded best with those who had a will to make it work. I think every single student got something out of it.
kthomas says:
Hi Larry George (reply in email forthcoming),
Yes– you make “good points,” and having glanced over what Derek links to only quickly, I wonder how those points fit into this debate.
In the seventh grade– as I do this the memory opens up in front of me– I “remember” picking up an article off the learning resources table, in my math teachers classroom.
It was not meant for students, but it quickly recited memory statistics– if you merely read (not outload), if you read and listened (auditory), if you read and spoke yourself.
Thus I developed the useful habit of mumbling everything to myself.
Your “numbers” example seems particularly apt– so much of the worlds of mathematics seems to me to fall flat with purely verbal explanation. (It has also been said, that Prof. Wooters long fingers and beard were visual aids, able to help chart complex relationships).
These seem to me “the basics:” David’s questions of “the lecture” aside, teaching, learning and explication seem to based in the ability to master multiple modes of explication, to–
let’s switch.
Derek says:
Larry –
I agree with what you say, and most of it strikes me as right. Anyone who teaches needs more than one trick in their arsenal. Techniques are, again, not the same as a discrete cognitive realm.
Lecturing is every bit as legitimate a teaching method as any other. In some cases it is the best way. But it is not the only way. (You show me an introductory college-level history class at your typical state university without lectures, I’m going to show you a clusterfuck).
dcat
kthomas says:
In “Global Meritocracy,” David references Beers referencing my fellow Kentuckian Wendell Berry:
It is of course hard for me to miss how much Berry is talking about the issues of the American South; nor that he idealizes; nor that he condemns {…}
Suz says:
Hmmmm, I seem to be hearing more of, “visual and auditory accompaniments are unnecessary to teaching. We should teach them all just reading, writing and arithmetic!” Yes, powerpoints can be bad, but so can books, or lectures, or small group discussions. I think it’s important to use images, movies, and documentary footage as they can reveal as many facts as reading a book about the subject. If the presenter can use them to good effect.
For example: we studied maps in my South Asian art class. It’s one thing to read, “The English viewed Indians as being inferior to themselves, hypersexualized half-naked savages.” It’s entirely different to see images in a cartouche on a map of an Indian woman, half-clothed and decked-out in bangles, presenting the allegory of England with a plate of riches. Not only had someone believed such things, they actually bother to superfluously engrave it on a map. (That also gets to various ideas of colonial control, maps, and images of power, but I won’t get to that here.)
So I’m saying that we should emphasize these skills (organizational, mathematical, visual, etc.) in addition to reading and writing. Using, “I’m a visual learner” is the same cop-out as, “I have ADHD, or a learning disorder, so I can’t complete that assignment at all.” Some compensation, such as incorporating images in textbooks, or giving the ADHD kid an extra hour to finish the test is not the same as saying that every special snowflake’s needs will be completely catered to.
Derek says:
Suz –
Where on earth have you seen anyone say the following, which you place in quotation marks: “visual and auditory accompaniments are unnecessary to teaching. We should teach them all just reading, writing and arithmetic!” I’ll give you a hint — this is not the place to be misrepresenting peoples’ arguments. No one said that; indeed no one here said anything like it, and most have said the opposite. As a history professor, I obviously do not want just those three areas taught. Be intellectually honest, please. It’s really not asking that much.
As a historian, I’m going to priviledge books over the other things you mention, but that’s fine — I still use images and documentary footage and films. How about arguing with real people rather than strawpeople?
dcat
kthomas says:
Suz: I’ll say again, my comments reflect some frustration. I’ll probably keep repeating that.
I work (in this case) in a technical field. However, many of the tasks in that field represent “a golden braid.”
In my specific context– which has some complexities I’m ignoring– people, when they see a problem, tend to compartmentalize and send the problem to “the person who does that,” to gloss.
This means that people loose the bigger picture and do not gain a rounded series of skills necessary to accomplish higher-level tasks.
As much as we have spoken of “digital divide–”, so much of what I read in business literature talks about a “knowledge-based” economy based on acquiring and developing skills and understanding.
The general (again gloss) I would draw, would be somewhere here: a complex cultural divide in which one group “gets this” and is trying to develop skills, while another is “just grazing.” Wealth is only one factor here– and it can be a negative one, in that one can have wealth (digital access) and no ‘desire to learn;’ wealth can lead to comfort and low motivation.
And of course– it is more, more complex. Given David’s example from earlier today, a high tolerance for boredom and repetition…
All that said, when I first read your example, the image that came to mind was that of the film of Hitler speaking in French, upon the occupation of Paris. We can write a hundred papers and analyses– nothing matches, or could convey, what that “document” does.
PTC says:
Derek- Yeah, pretty much. It is not an exact science. These are theories… cognitive theories, no less. If students are using this as an excuse for poor grades… then they have other larger issues.
There does seem to be more of a “hand holding” culture out there these days. Is that what you are hitting at here? Shut up and read? Shut up and listen? Sometimes, perhaps even often, people have to just shut the hell up and do something they do not like doing to achieve/ learn. If you fail, well, you failed.
I agree with what you and ken are getting at here- which seems to be the larger societal context of the personal responsibility of our youth (or lack thereof), general acceptance of the society for older patriarchs to hold people to task… accountability for that… etc.
Derek says:
PTC –
You got it. It’s the culture of hand holding crossed with the culture of entitlement.
My stomach just turned when you used “older patriarch” though. I’m not old enough to be a patrarch.
dcat
Larry George says:
Derek @9 – I wasn’t disagreeing with you about “cognitive realms” at all; rather I was agreeing with you and trying to fit PTC’s comments and concerns (here and elsewhere) in as well. I guess I was too oblique and was trying to fit too many separate thoughts in at the same time. I think laypeople often confuse teaching/learning techniques/approaches with the purported cognitive realms — and I should be clear that, unlike you and Ken, I say that and everything else here as a layperson (except that I guess I’m a bit of an autodidact on how various individuals seem to learn, and I’ve been fascinated by trial and error efforts with students I was tutoring or coaching — who were much younger than the people with whom you work).
PTC says:
Derek@15- “Kids these days.” lol.
We are not making ourselves appear any younger with this kind of post and comments, that is for sure!
Quick, somebody think of something hip to say.