The Problem with Learning Styles
Why they can be a restrictive philosophy in education if taken too seriously
As humans, we love to categorize things.
The art of sorting all the information around you into similar groups used to be a means of survival. Now it can be a convenience factor, or as harmful as negative stereotypes.
In an excerpt from the book “ Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn,” authors John Hattie and Gregory Yates explain that people are simply not one “type” of learner. They go on to say that “learning (is) determined strongly by (students’) prior knowledge, by patters they can recognize, and not by their learning style.”
The Association for Psychological Science investigated this topic, and it seems that the reason most scientific data couldn’t turn up enough evidence for learning styles was because the wrong research design was used.
The proper research design would include “categorizing” participants into these styles, then randomly assign them to a style specific teacher for a test and then have each group take the same test. If the research supported the existence of learning styles, then the people who just so happened to be assigned their “type” would have better scores than their unlucky counterparts.
Multiple studies showed contradictory results, and the elite few studies that had turned up with supporting results “did not assess popular learning-style schemes.”
Even though the pond of evidence for learning styles is small, it’s not consistent enough to prove that specific styles exist. So why are they still around?
One of the reasons is that learning styles are a great excuse when we don’t understand something in a presentation or class lecture.
As Tesia Marshik, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crossee points out, it [can feed] our desire to be different. She has an entire TED Talk about the concept of learning styles versus critical self-reflection, and I highly encourage you to check it out.
Learning styles are a well-intended step in the wrong direction. A “one-size fits all” approach to teaching isn’t ideal. Rather, more individualized approaches need to be taken. This, of course, shows challenges when you think of public school teachers dealing with 25 or more students in their classroom. Even worse when you continue into the post-secondary level and an average of 150 to 300 students in a gen-ed class [at large public institutions].
The trick here is proper scaffolding in the younger years. The brain is so malleable at a young age, so parents, caretakers and primary school teachers may find themselves better off starting with a highly-individualized approach, and then slowly becoming [less individualized] as the difficultly increases in larger populated institutions.
However, for secondary and post-secondary students, learning the material in many different forms is your best bet at understanding information. If you can write, read, diagram and recite the information and connections you need to know for an exam, you’ll be much better than someone else who has to “visualize” where the answer to a question was in their notes.
So before you try to figure out the best way to study your notes, deciding whether or not you should draw diagrams or write lists, consider mixing up the way you digest information in a classroom or lab setting. Most modern day classrooms aren’t going to cater to all the various ways to learn, so arming yourself with the ability to connect information through different methods is key to a well-rounded brain.
This article was originally published here. Anu Kumar is the original author and authorizes this article to be republished on the Medium Publication Corpus Callosum.
Formatting was modified to better fit Medium, small changes are indicated in square brackets, and missing Oxford commas were inserted.
