Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments The dubunking of learning styles (again)

The myth of learning styles (auditory, visual, kinesthetic) continues to persist, in spite of little evidence to support the idea that students learn better when taught according to their preferred style.


Depressing:

The article mentions a lack of empirical evidence for learning styles. Some may wonder if lack of empirical evidence may be more a function of the ethics of experimenting on humans in regard to their education, rather than being reflective of the non-existence of preferred learning styles?

Some might say that the large body of anecdotal evidence and lived experience which seems to support that various individuals prefer learning by hearing something, or seeing something, or doing something fuels the belief that learning styles exist.

Also it depends on your definition of "Learn".

Memorize, deep understanding of a complex subject, etc.

Certain learning tasks lend themselves to specific learning modes. Certain things are just personal preference.

Learning a list of spelling words I would think different things would work for different people.

No ethical problem at all. You bring people into the lab and have them learn something. You don't have to go into the classroom and mess with their actual educational experience. Cognitive psychologists do this kind of research all the time (thoroughly vetted and approved by ethics review boards).

Rigorously designed studies have been done, and have found no benefit from matching the learning experience to the learner's supposed learning style.

Here is a review article, and here is another that goes into more technical detail. I'd be happy to share the complete papers with anyone who wants, just PM me.

MegMeg, could you please post the names of the articles. I'm taken to your portal and prompted for login with no article preview. I'd be interested to read these.

Val, my DD was actually directed by a nationally known virtual schooling organization to "complete the VARK survey about learning styles" every one of the nine years that she was enrolled with them.

It was complete nonsense.

For an unpacking of that beastly "tool", please see Kevin Smith's blog posts which pick apart some of the more specious claims about "learning modalities and styles."

http://learningstylesevidence.blogspot.com/2012/02/paper-review-sensory-modality-used-for.html

The main problem, as Kevin notes in this post is that;


This is the major problem with a lot of work published in this area. As a scientist, this sort of thing drives me positively batty when I try to read papers written by behavioral science and education experts (er-- or so-called experts, perhaps).

I've only got Princess Bride quotes to fall back upon at that point. "Associated." This word...


My favorite of Kevin's posts is this one:

http://learningstylesevidence.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-meta-analysis-of-vak-pre-vark.html

to which I can only add--

Let me introduce a little thing that I'd like to call, ohhhhh, just for fun, say-- "Null Hypothesis."

Because every puzzling thing EVER in this field is nicely summed by assuming that it might be that the null hypothesis is actually correct.

Too bad that nobody publishing in this field ever considered that their basic assumptions (that learning styles even EXIST, or that they might make any difference in terms of learning) might simply be bogus.

Now, shall we talk about Myers-Briggs next?

Links fixed.

What I find shocking is the fact that the meta analyses HK linked were conducted in 1987, and yet the myth of targeting different learning modalities persists in education 28 years later.

It's the truthiness of the concept, though, not really whether or not it is real. Ergo, additional evidence is no more important than it is to religious observance. The entire construct is belief-based to begin with.

I'd also argue that this is a shining example of something else that I've noted to be fairly endemic in education (as a field, I mean):


if you WANT it to be true, just believe it hard enough. Voila!

Please note that this also explains why some educators truly believe that acceleration is harmful (in spite of reams of decent quality evidence to suggest that at worst, it is no MORE harmful than doing nothing), and the like.

So many, many studies in the field are so poorly constructed that they are more or less meaningless, and there is also a very hefty dose of engineering experimental design to generate the desired outcomes. Add in a hefty dose of chutzpah (at least I think that's what it is... though maybe it's ignorance meets hubris?) and you get pronouncements that literally make NO SENSE in light of the data in the study.

I've actually seen classroom educators read such a study and nod sagely while pronouncing that said publication "supports the classroom practices*" that they have been using with "good impact** on learning."

Perception as reality, as my DH would say.

* Bogus classroom practices, at least if the data in front of them in the publication is reliable, that is.


** How this is measured isn't ever quite clear either-- I guess they FEEL that students are, er, well-- better somehow. It makes them feel effective.

Elementary educators tend to be very predominantly of this type.