The debate was already red hot before this video by Professor Daniel T Willingham from the University of Virginia (brought to my attention by Stephen Downes) added fuel to the fire. On the one side are the learning and development romantics, all voodoo and crystals, holding firm to their pseudo-psychological beliefs. On the other, the cold, clinical and calculating rationalists, trying to make sense of the multitude of interacting variables that impact on teaching and learning by resorting to the ultimate killjoy that is science. You can guess which side I'm on.
No-one doubts that learners differ in terms of personality and preferences, but whether these can be usefully categorised as learning styles is highly debatable and certainly unproven. Teachers and trainers do, anyway, have far more important issues to consider when considering their interactions with learners. By far the most important of these, as far as I'm concerned, is the nature of the learning to be achieved (concepts, principles, rules, facts, social skills, psychomotor skills, problem-solving skills, attitudes, etc.).
Obviously learner differences are important, but there are more significant issues than their personality and preferences, for example:
- their motivation to learn the subject in question (if the motivation's not there, it has to be stimulated);
- their prior knowledge of the subject (novices need more structure and support);
- the extent to which they've learned how to learn (independent learners will be much less demanding);
And let's not forget that we also have to work within the constraints set by time, budget, facilities, equipment, tools and skills. Yes, we have enough to think about, without trying to develop alternative routes through learning experiences to pander to some vague conception of individual preferences.
I don't blame the learning styles believers; I blame those who've filled their minds with confusing and ultimately unhelpful theories dressed up as science. If learning styles do exist, go on somebody, prove it.
I'm as the cold, clinical and calculating as it gets, but I don't think that the case (that there are no learning styles) has been made.
ReplyDeleteIt is *certainly* not made by the work of Willingham.
There seems to be a bit of 'denying the obvious' going on on the part of the sceptics.
Case in point:
A blind person will never learn visually. You have to teach this person through audio, scent, touch, and the rest.
Similarly, a person who cannot read is going to learn poorly from text.
I haven't seen the case made why these observations - which to me seem blatently obvious - are wrong.
You say that there are more significant issues than their personality and preferences, such as motivation, prior knowledge or how they learned to learn.
ReplyDeleteThese look to me as things that contribute to define your personnality and your learning preferences. Therefore, in my mind you are contradicting yourself.
I tend to aggree with Stephen's comment above. People, for different reasons, will develop some senses more than others and therefore will be more receptive to stimuli coming through those senses.
To respond to Guy, I don't believe I am contradicting myself. Prior knowledge and motivation are dependent on what is being taught/learned, so are situational. Whether you are or are not an independent learner is a more fixed characteristic, I admit, but is only likely to affect preferences to the extent that dependent learners will want more structure and support. It certainly won't make a difference to their auditory, visual or kinesthetic inclinations.
ReplyDeleteTo respond to Stephen, surely the burden of proof is on those proposing learning styles theories rather then the sceptics. And I don't find the examples of the blind person or the illiterate person terribly relevant here, because these are real exceptions. I'd maintain that, in normal circumstances, we will all find a visual element helpful to learning, although some may find the verbal (textual or auditory) elements more digestible than others.
ReplyDeleteClive
ReplyDeleteNice post.
Guy
Lots of people agree with you. It seems to make transparent sense that there would be variation in senses, and that information coming in one of the more sensitive would be privileged. The idea makes so much sense that lots of people have tested it. . .and can't find any evidence that it's true.
Stephen, sure, blind people can't learn visually. But you can't base a theory of how the mind works solely on a few disabilities. A more reasonable prediction would be that learning disabilities might be primarily auditory or visual in nature, and that learning styles theories apply to LD kids. That sounded reasonable to me too, until John Lloyd reminded me that the first studies testing the VAK theory were on LD kids. (He summarizes some of them in an article published in Remedial and Special Education, 1984, vol 5, no 1, pp 7-15. I'm pleased to hear that you're as cold and clinical as they come,if that means that you are persuaded by data. Can you tell me what data makes you think that learning styles are a useful theory of cognition?
tdmkhqGreat post! However, proving the existence or non-existence of learning styles is like provng the existence or non-existence of God: Don't expect the matter to be settled in this lifetime. I happen to be a "believer" in learning styles, which I would define as a completely logical interpretation of individuality within each human brain. I also happen to believe that motivation is more a factor of neural wiring responding to external stimuli (i.e., what is being taught), as opposed to some universal benchmark that applies equally to all people regardless of their "style." I can't "prove" any of my beliefs, but I also don't know of anyone who can dis-prove them either.
ReplyDeleteEric, I agree with you about motivation, which is why I said in a previous comment that it is situational, not a 'style'. I would also agree with you about our individualities, but there's a long way from that very general point to classifying people as visual, auditory or kinesthetic by nature.
ReplyDeleteThe very collocation "learning styles" I find risky, and this for two reasons:
ReplyDelete1) learning is a mix of perception and the social structuring of experience, of which style – more a question of output than input - is a relatively trivial variable: by that I mean styles vary tremendously but coexist very nicely and indeed require one another in all their variability for harmonious social development and broadened perception,
2) the idea has at its core a consumerist connotation, attributing too much importance to mere preference. Preference is not style. Learning is not shopping.
On the first point I maintain that the risk, when the theory is applied as policy, is that of isolating learners and desocializing them within the learning process by appealing only to their individuality and flattering it at the same time. On the second, the serious risk is to define them or to encourage them to define themselves by their conscious (or expressed) preferences. But in all cases the ideology of learning styles pushes in the direction of radical individualism (of a consumerist variety) and weakens the social basis of learning.
To use a related metaphor within the consumerist culture perspective, the learning styles approach represents to me a trend in civilization that can be seen in the steady drift away from the collective meal (family, clan, group, village, etc.) where the means of exchange and therefore of learning are varied, towards the fast food, self-service, eat-burp-and-be-done-with-it but order what you fancy culture which we're all familiar with. Meals have, of course, throughout human history, been intensive and consistently significant learning occasions, and unlike classrooms respect a more harmonious balance of input (listening) and output (expression), the key to effective learning.
Does that mean learning styles don’t exist. Not really. But, to me it means they don’t matter!
The research by Frank Coffield and colleagues is worth reading in relation to this:
ReplyDeleteLearning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning A systematic and critical review
http://www.lsda.org.uk/files/PDF/1543.pdf
Should we be using learning styles? What research has to say to practice
http://www.lsda.org.uk/files/PDF/1540.pdf
Learning Styles for Post 16 Learners - What Do We Know?
http://www.lsda.org.uk/files/PDF/Unplearnstylespost16.pdf
My perspective on this issue is both cultural and pedagogical. The individualist/social (or collectivist) point I made in my previous post is cultural. Taken a step further it becomes pedagogical. Might the problem behind the debate be one of mislabelling the issue itself and misleading the interested parties? It isn’t really about learning styles, but about teaching styles.
ReplyDeleteThe question of the stylistics of pedagogical communication has been not so much neglected as repressed since the beginning of the industrial era. The real issue, when you look at the literature, is the lack of stylistic range of teachers and trainers, the failure to respond to the variety of ways in which ALL people learn and to harness the complementarity of varied stimuli in structuring the complex associations that make learning possible. But we masquerade it as a debate about learning styles, putting the onus on the learners. Why not just come out and say, “teachers don’t know the first thing about communicating knowledge, and even less understanding, yet they’re the ones who teach each other how to teach”? That’s what the “advice” about learning styles seems to boil down to, anyway.
When I see in the literature questions such as this one “How adequate is the training that teachers and tutors receive on learning styles?” the fundamental dishonesty of the whole debate seems evident. Why not ask, “how adequate is the training teachers and tutors receive on their ability to vary the way the communicate whatever they think they are meant to communicate”? We don’t ask that question because it focuses on the possible inadequacy of teachers and trainers, whereas it’s much more comfortable to switch the blame to the learners. It is assumed that teachers will teach better if they know how people learn each as a unique individual. But when we investigate this we discover that people generally learn in spite of teachers and primarily outside their presence. Yet when we engage in the debate about learning styles we seem to be searching for ways of giving more power to teachers rather than encouraging more initiative for learners.
The reason for varying one's teaching style is not the accomodation of individual learning styles, but optimising the efficacy of the learning process for everyone. That's why I see this as a typical cultural issue, reflecting an ambient ideology of individualism. I admit that it would really be too much, however, to get the teaching and training establish to think outside its cultural box.
Kia ora Clive!
ReplyDeleteI think the problems arise when we attempt to put learners and their preferences into categories. Stephen is right, there are cases that are indisputable. On the other hand, teachers will insist on forcing learners into categories that they, perhaps, shouldn't be in.
Do I have a learning style? You bet I do. But it's not always the same. It's different in the morning from at night, for instance. And it can be different from day to day, and even according to what I've been doing beforehand.
Any attempt to squeeze me into a category and force me to learn under the wrong circumstances and I react, and have done since I first went to school - funny that.
One category that I haven't found in the theory books (or sites) is what I call the 'interest' category. If you teach me something in such a way that you interest me in it (no matter by what means, technique, visual, audio, text or touchy-feely) I'll learn it.
Curiousity and interest are two factors that seem to transcend any of the so-called learning style theory, at least with me, and I've proved it time after time. How do I rationalise this? Simply because ALL my senses become more keen whenever I'm interested in something I think is worth learning - this happens without me thinking about it.
Am I vastly different from other learners? I don't think so. In fact, I'd say I was fairly typical, for there are some things, I can't learn, some things I won't learn and some things I don't want to learn . . .
. . . unless I'm interested.
Ka kite
from Middle-earth
Ahhh...now the lights are coming on. I think the rub here is on the word "style," which seems to be way too ambiguous for us to find the commonality of thought. My personal definition of learning "styles" is not as hard-lined as the "auditory, visual or kinesthetic" camp, and because of that I completely missed this idea in all the earlier posts. My own "theory" is that learning styles are more closely associated with personality "styles" than they are with a specific sensory method of data capturing. Does that help at all? Make things worse?
ReplyDeleteTēnā koutou katoa!
ReplyDeleteHello Everyone!
Most commenters seem to be looking for something here, some sinuous link that proves the rule, no matter what their belief. I have never supported the Learning Styles theory, but of course, that is just opinion.
Clive defined two camps - on the one hand the Mystics, on the other the Statistics. The fact is that Science involves a bit of both, and I don't really think it's fair to Science to say that it is cold, clinical and calculating and there would be a few Science Icons who would probably fit more with the Mystics than the other.
Goethe, a Scientist whose life's work I've admired, is purported to have said (in German) that if one goes looking for evidence to support one's theory, it will be found. I think this applies well to what we're looking at here.
There isn't a lot of cold, clinical, calculating evidence one way or the other. And I suspect that it's because we're looking at the most complicated machine that we're ever likely to come across (at least this century) and that is the human mind.
I'm inclined to hedge my bets and believe that all the factors we hear about, that assist learning, are probably making their various contributions. Another way I can put it is that I don't disagree with anyone's take on initiating learner interest, capturing learner attention, getting the environment right for learning, pandering to learner whims - the list goes on. Quite frankly, I've found that they all work to some degree.
But like myself, if the learner doesn't want to learn, there's no amount of force, bribery, cajoling, sweet-talking, call it what you want, will get the reluctant learner to learn.
Humans are the most complex, flexible and adaptive animals on earth. They are also amongst the most stubborn.
Ka kite
This is a really interesting debate.
ReplyDeleteFor me the bottom line is that it is unlikely that all of your learning audience are going to respond in the same way to one type of content delivery. Therefore it shows how critical it is to know your audience so that you can adapt accordingly.
Providing a blended approach of delivery methods therefore is always going to be critical along with the emotional intelligence to continuously respond to feedback?
Chris
http://learn2develop.blogspot.com
You thought that only Indian education system has faults and problems. However, just go through the links below and you find out that the UK education system is equally bad.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7542176.stm
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/opinion-former-index/education/balls-announces-sat-results-delay-$1230376.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Teens_marking_SAT_papers_in_UK/articleshow/3247143.cms
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/jul/28/sats.fiasco
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d89a3aec-49f6-11dd-891a-000077b07658.html
Blind people don't learn visually and people who can't read don't learn from text. These are tautological sstements that say nothing about the debate.
ReplyDeleteCoffield did the work. Far too many theories and all of them suspect. Learning is not some simple sensory process, it's a complex set of cognitive functions. As for 'style' it's clearly a vague and awful term to describe cognitive abilities.
Even if they do exist the damage done by labelling kids as visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners is wholly banal and dangerously stereotypical. Several neuroscientists have come out publically comdemnig this nonsense. As for Honey and Mumford - that's just a case of commercial fraud. There never was any scientific evidence for their theory.
The sooner we clear this useless, vague and unverified theory out of the way, the sooner we can improve teaching and learning. It's the equivalent of physicists believing that everything can be reduced to earth, air, fire and water.
Do I detect an outburst of black bile? Doctors used to recommend a balance of blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm.
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed, the 'theory' of learning styles is about as scientific as the theory of humours or the four 'personality types' beloved of rudimentary sales training.
And why do these things always come in fours?
I'm not that familiar with the research on learning styles. Does research in mathematics education also suggest that learning styles do not exist? I would imagine that some students have a harder time learning mathematics by simply going over proofs while others don't.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of learning styles does not create a situation in which an individual is isolated if viewed from perspective of the student and not the teacher. If the teacher is unable to communicate effectively then the burden remains on the student's abilities and efforts to learn the material. He still attends the class but needs to digest the information in his own way. Of course this has to be done no matter what. It is in that process that there are similarities among us that may be termed styles.
ReplyDeleteA basic concept when it comes to the functioning of our brain is that it works on a system of reinforcement. Over time we develop preferences or dislikes based upon what we are exposed too. Further exposure or reinforcement of a thought creates a more efficient pathway, eventually leading up to a learning preference. Microscopically this can be seen through the myelenation of neural track or in the growth of a completely new connection from one neuron to another. If the track is used often it becomes further enforced with mylen that has the effect of creating a faster more efficient pathway, physically. These small links add up in an individual's mind creating preferences.
If there are similarities between learning preferences, then one can gain much from the way that they are explained streamlining their mind for more efficient use over time. Anyone can develop a learning method if the same successful approach is used repetitively, however a person cannot fully control the environment that is around them. Through the options that we are genetically enabled to do our mind creates a structure to respond to the surrounding environment. This response creates our basic preferences or our own style. Anyone through persistence and discipline can add on a new room to this structure. However, it would be more efficient to work with what we have been exposed to before creating a new method.
The problem is the question is wrong, both epistemologically and practically. "Learning styles" is a construct, and as such it doesn't "exist" in any real sense.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is this:
Does the learning styles construct have value in a) explaining events parsimoniously, and b) improving learning and instruction?
I'll try to address these here and/or on my blog at http://thetrainingworld.com/wp/ since I have to attend to some work outside the office.
twitter.com/rbacal
Reading this sceptical post and the long, detailed comments and counter-comments qualifies as a primer.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a narrowing of the definition of styles and more focus on practical classroom applications for often overworked, underpaid educators would be helpful. There's little doubt that most students would learn better with individual lessons focused on their strengths, and tailoring material for individual learners is wonderful where possible. My unease with the learning styles mantra is it too often re-enforces naive and false expectations for what a teacher should do - and reduces the learning demands on students.
If Juan and Marisa can't read, it must be the teacher didn't understand their learning style. Consider me sceptical.
I think everyone learns in its own way. we are normal or those who are blind have a look for a different study. I found some married couples who are both blind in my country. but they still can work to have children who can help them in everyday life.
ReplyDeleteThis is an amazing story about how a child in my country can be self-sufficient and help their parents do all the work without being taught.
This news using Indonesian, please translate in english by google translate..
http://kabar-pendidikan.blogspot.com/2011/04/muhammad-aditya-bocah-5-tahun-yang-luar.html