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.

Three thoughts:

1) Conceptually
On the one hand, we have a person's stated preference, when a person has a preference. (By analogy, a person might state a preference for natural fibers, such as wool.)

On another hand, we have others developing assessment tools to detect a preference when a person may be unaware of having a preference. (By analogy, a person might state no known preference for natural or man-made fibers, then might answer questions on a brief survey assessment tool, which subsequently indicates s/he has slight a preference for synthetic fibers such as polar fleece fabric.)

Thirdly, we have individuals assessing whether the preference (either known/stated or unknown/detected by assessment tool) translates to measurable efficiency/efficacy in their learning. (By analogy, individuals might spend time outdoors in cold weather, wearing garments of wool, of polar fleece, and of blended fibers... then be told that each garment resulted in them being equally warm. This revealed result would not negate the individual's fiber preference, if the individual had a fiber preference.)

Similarly, an individual might prefer wearing particular colors, and yet might provide equally engaging presentations regardless of whether s/he was wearing preferred colors, or non-preferred colors.

There is something to be said for the affective side, for the whole person, for respecting that individuals have preferences.

2) About the Meta-Analysis
Some may say that a shortcoming of the study went unnoticed. This was described as:
Additionally, some may say that using a blend of modalities in the control group may confound results. Specifically, if students better absorbed information presented in their preferred modality, then a control group might consist of presenting information devoid of the preferred modality. For example, comparing the learning of a person who prefers auditory information, under the circumstances of auditory presentation as compared/contrasted with solely visual/kinesthetic learning experiences.

3) Visual/Spatial learners and wiggly kids
If we set aside learning styles, how do we explain, categorize, label, relate to, and support visual-spatial learners?
If we set aside learning styles, how do we explain, categorize, label, relate to, and support wiggly (kinesthetic) kids?
Do we pathologize them?

The point of all the research is that there is no such thing as a "visual-spatial" or "kinesthetic" learner (although wiggliness is a normal part of being a kid). People have a right to their preferences, but that doesn't mean that others (schools in this case) should pander to their beliefs, especially if their beliefs have been proven to be false.

Some may say there is visual-spatial ability? IQ subtests measure whether this is a relative strength or relative weakness? Possibly this dissertation from UCONN and this Visual-Spatial website explain better.

To me there are two questions: whether a particular learning style exists and how the said learning style should be taught are to very distinctly different questions, and I will comment on the existences first.

It is clear that different people learn different types of skills with different levels of ease. From an analysis point of view if such a test exists to differentiate individuals as being relatively better at one set of tasks that are human defined to be visual spatial tasks with a high level of confidence then it should follow that that this human defined category can be said to exist. Let's make it clear it makes no difference what those tasks are, or how they might relate to the brain or body. Just the answered question: can two populations be categorized as having different relative comparative strengths with some level of confidence. If a natural phenomenon is shown to be the causal agent it does strengthen the label, but it is not required in order to state that such a category can exist. It seems clear that if one chooses the right set of tasks to be the label for visual learner then certainly the label can be allowed to exist because certainly we can define a test that can with a high level of confidence show that some people are better able to learn certain types of information than others.

As for dirty data, the fact that many individuals do not cleanly fit within a category is not important. I think anybody who regularly works with real world data should be quite comfortable with blurry decision boundaries. blurry decision boundaries do not give cause for saying the category does not exist. Please understand it is my intention to pretend that I am creating this term despite its previous existence. It is to show that such a term has the right to exist assuming it is defined properly and can be tested.

Second, the effectiveness of teaching in a particular style. This I believe is a truly hard problem to answer. There are many reasons this is hard to answer, but here is one that jumps out to me:
Let's say that everybody does agree with my logic that one should be able to create a label called visual spatial. My same logic combined with just how different everybody seems to be from one another should allow the creation of a truly large number of categories that we can name. Some teaching strategies that might seem appropriate for the visual spatial learner might be totally inappropriate for some of these other categories. It is also very likely that these other categories are not all mutually exclusive. meaning person "A" might be a visual spatial person which should do well with tactic "B", but person "A" might also be a DoDoDah person who performs poorly with tactic "B".

Now, that I have stated in my own way what is probably obvious to most people... that people are complicated. Let me say that I do believe that if very well designed studies were conducted to mate up different learning styles to different types of learners, and if there was a way to implement these categories efficiently it probably would lead to a better overall learning experience. However herding cats is a hard thing to do as well.

DoDoDah indeed!

You may find this brief summary of a/the leading contemporary model of intelligence to be of value:

http://www.iapsych.com/chcv2.pdf

Though many of the lower order abilities are more conceptual than empirical, the broad abilities in this modified Cattell-Horn-Carroll model, in the top row, are largely supported by factor analytic research.

Another leading theory is Robert Sternberg's triarchic/successful intelligence (there is a much larger body of research, but this one is freely downloadable):

http://www.psicorip.org/Resumos/PerP/RIP/RIP036a0/RIP03921.pdf

Some data supports this, mainly that students identified as having a preference for one of the three domains of intelligence (analytical, practical, creative) are more successful when instruction in a skill or concept includes their preferred domain for at least one component of the instructional set.

Right-- but the inherent difficulty in assessing the results in such studies are that it is effectively impossible to tease apart motivation as part and parcel of the resultant effectiveness (as measured).



So if I like the color yellow, for example, I might be more inclined to pay attention to a document which is printed on yellow paper. It might have very little to do with the content or the writing style.

Confounding variables. Now, excellent experimental design accommodates that by using larger samples and well-designed controls which are "sham" treated in one way or another. Fancy stats ensue-- but I'm a little suspicious of a study that never even bothers to ask that kind of question-- whether or no the study subjects' own perceptions and biases might be influencing the resultant data in some way, I mean.

This is what I find maddening-- while I agree, AEH, that such a construct perhaps logically SHOULD exist, it is still predicated on that particular "domain" (for lack of a better term) in measures of intelligence-- which are merely models, and probably proxies (and imperfect ones at that) of what it is that they attempt to codify.

It's also the case that in studies where test subjects have been repeatedly evaluated, their classifications CHANGE. This is also true of Myers-Briggs, btw; there is a reason I mentioned that one.

So whatever it is that this tool is identifying-- it's not stable. Maybe it's even somewhat random.

Is the trait for which it is a proxy even real?

Nobody seems to know for sure. Not really. Yes, scores on individual subtests of cognitive ability seem to be stable, but that doesn't mean that those subtests are measuring what we hope that they are measuring. Entirely possible that they actually represent something else, which also happens to be a stable characteristic.

The really interesting underlying issue in my estimation is that people's preferences and perceptions may be wildly inaccurate in the first place, and that a great many individuals may THINK that they "learn best" in one way-- but can be entirely wrong about that.

I've been amused by students who have steadfastly maintained that they "prefer auditory" learning, yet they can recall what they do on homework problems and have excellent recall of material in a course text, but almost no recall of video or live instruction.


I've learned to just ignore whatever-it-is that people tell me about their Myers-Briggs "type" as well-- because that is another one that simply isn't stable within serial evaluations even for a single individual. I know a number of people who really, really believe in it, however. They are otherwise fairly well-educated people, too. I just smile.

as mum to a extremely visual special child, I have to say I never thought of it as a learning style so much as a personality / brain wiring trait.

Anyway, I never could figure out which learning style I was so I agree with HK on the point that the research may or may not prove anything.

However given that the entire NZ school system (private and public) is built around different learning styles to the point where our local HS of choice offers multiple assessment strategies based on learning styles I'm drinking the kool aid on this one.

Do you get to choose which assessment style or is it allocated based on a survey? I remember it being presented as fact though, it is one of those things that agrees with what we think we know which makes it a seductive theory.

Eta. Wasn't dyslexia categorised as a learning preference by one of our (NZ) education experts not so long ago?