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Teachers must ditch 'neuromyth' of learning styles, say scientists
- steffann 9y agoTeaching should include a mix of learning styles so everybody gets at least some information in their preferred style as a starting point.
- Pulcinella 9y agoThe article is about how learning styles are bunk...
- jecel 9y agoThere is a group of scientists claiming to have done experiments proving the idea of learning styles is false. Without more details, I am sceptical. I went to school in the 1970s and many teachers demanded that all students copy in their notebooks everything they wrote on the blackboard. To me that made going to class useless. I would get more and more behind and at the end of the class would not remember anything - I might as well have just stayed home. Fortunately for me I didn't actually need the classes since just reading the books was enough. Most of my classmates, on the other hand, learned quite a lot as a side effect of this copying. Some actually would copy a second time from the "scratch notebook" to the "clean notebook" when they got home. That was an important part of their learning style. Those teachers that imposed copying in their classes probably had the same style and thought it would be good for everybody. When the blackboard got replaced by overhead projectors and then by PowerPoint, copying the text was no longer an option (specially if the lights were dimmed). It also wasn't needed since the teachers would distribute copies of their slides to the class. This style (with its faster pace) was way more effective for me but I could see that many (if not most) other students were learning a lot less. So if someone has experiments proving that a "one size fits all" teaching method is best, I would like to see it.
- tdb7893 9y agoThere is pervasive myth that how students learn best can practically be separated into discreet styles such as the "listening" style or the "visual" style, and that is what the article is saying is not a useful idea. I don't think the article is arguing at all that "one size fits all" for education.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoIf it's not "one-size fits all" doesn't that mean different modes are preferable for different students, wouldn't it be reasonable to call these modes "styles"? The article sounds like a straw man, I can readily believe that someone identified as "listening style" only getting education aurally would be ineffective; but that doesn't mean that reinforcing information update aurally, or using a communication style of learning won't help, surely. Personally I found I need to write to acquire information, an important part of learning; also doodling helps me digest complex information. I'm quite visual in some ways, I can't do directions but a glance at a map does work for me - similarly I usually need a mental picture to hang further learning on. Fractal geometry came easily to me but I've never managed to grok hypercubes as I can't really conjure a mental model, etc.. I'd absolutely agree that pigeonholing people as "style X" and educating them separately is probably not good, personally I've never come across that in teaching.
- watwut 9y ago" If it's not "one-size fits all" doesn't that mean different modes are preferable for different students, wouldn't it be reasonable to call these modes "styles"?" Not really, because a.) it is often situational b.) you can get better at learning with other "style" if you are exposed to it more c.) it is more of a scale then discreet grouping. The individualization is not so much about always talking vs always reading. It is more about identifying individual stumbling spot, figuring out what the child missed in prerequisities, whether the child does not develop faster/slower then expectation, adjusting breaks to individual attention span and so on.
- phkahler 9y ago>> The article is about how learning styles are bunk... Without citing any evidence or referencing a specific paper or study... I found the irony amusing. I've found that explaining something in even a slightly different way can make it click for someone. If it were me, I'd advocate a variety of styles be used for everyone rather than try to identify an individuals most preferred. This would expose all of them to different ways of learning - I wonder if there's research showing that to be a good or bad thing.
- jf22 9y agoWhat is ironic? This was an article reporting on a letter which links to an organization funding the studies. This is like being annoyed with an article about solar panel efficiency, that quotes a scientist, not referencing the scientists patents.
- cestith 9y agoIt doesn't say exactly that. It says that focusing on teaching a student in a way catered only to their learning style, real or perceived, leads to worse educational outcomes. Having a mix of teaching methods for all students rather than catering narrowly may be allowing the students to be better all-around students.
- Retric 9y agoTeaching children according to their individual “learning style” does not achieve better results and should be ditched by schools in favour of evidence-based practice, according to leading scientists. So, I am not sure what your describing is actually accurate. Intuitively it seems like presenting the same information in 3 ways is going to work better than 1, but each method has equivalent time to work with so there is zero added redundancy.
- teslabox 9y agoIt would be more helpful to ditch the 'myth' that age-segregated classrooms are an improvement over the one-room school house. It used to be that education was something people did for themselves. Parents or a teacher would help children learn what they wanted to learn, when they were ready to learn it. Modern schooling forces children to learn on the teacher's schedule. John Taylor Gatto wrote extensively of the corrupt nature of institutionalized schooling 15-20 years ago. I guess it's not polite to point out that the system is rigged against children, so Mr. Gatto's insights into more effective teaching have been successfully ignored in recent years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis "Against School: How Public Education Cripples our Kids, and Why" - http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm Archive.org should have the complete text of "The Underground History of American Education", which was formerly posted in its entirety at http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com Also search for "I quit, I think", and ... "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"... several copies of these essays are scattered around the internet.
- jostylr 9y agoFor those interested in learning how a return to a one-room school house kind of mentality goes, the Sudbury Model Schools are such an example. The original such school's website has a number of resources: http://www.sudval.org/ http://www.sudval.org/
- swift 9y agoJohn Taylor Gatto is really worth reading. I also highly recommend "How Children Fail" by John Holt. It's one of those books that I keep thinking about, even years after I first read it.
- protomyth 9y agoNot sure about older children, but I was with a program that ran early childhood for the 6 weeks to 3+ year children (pre-Head Start). Other than the infants, all the children were in the same area. The older kids basically taught the younger children potty training and other skills. The teachers were still able to do individual learning (often helped by the younger children having watched the older children) and the children were happy. I think daycare / ECE that segregates children by years are doing a huge disservice to the children.
- Pulcinella 9y agoFor those wondering what is meant by learning styles. I've written this in the past: Commonly, with learning styles a student was considered an auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learner. Timmy is an auditory leaner? He should learn to calculate voltage through lectures and song. Timmy is a visual learner? He should learn to calculate voltage through pictures and diagrams. Timmy is a kinesthetic learner? He should learn to calculate voltage through dance. It's a shallow understanding of how learning really happens. No one learned how to throw a football by singing about it and no one has a strong understanding of circuits and how to design them just by listening to lectures.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI think knowledge about auditory, visual, or kinesthetic is still very useful. For example, I mainly learn by doing or reading. If someone gives me a lecture I will remember almost nothing later. It's not the answer to everything but it helps to think about it..
- Retra 9y agoIt doesn't really help, though. When a student fails to learn something, it doesn't do any good to sit around wondering what "kind of learner" they are. You need to figure out what actually stopped then from learning. Students need to be able to learn from the world they live in, not from some meticulously sterilized learning laboratory. If you can't learn from a lecture, you need to solve that problem by figuring out how to actually change yourself to learn from a lecture, not by avoiding lectures. You need to understand what can actually be learned from a lecture and what needs additional outside experience.
- maxxxxx 9y agoThe world we live in is not fixed, but can be changed. I don't think it makes sense to bang your head against a limitation you have but instead you should find ways to work around. For the students who doesn't do well with lectures it may mean to read a book or get some hands-on experience. For the teacher it may mean to give handouts before the lecture or offer some hands-on lab.
- oobey 9y agoSo, how should kids be taught? Since learning styles are a myth, would it be okay to skip in-person lessons entirely and just move everyone to individual text-based book learning? After all, it looks like the idea that "someone might learn better in person" or "by discussing things with peers" is complete bunk, and one method should be sufficient for everyone.
- adamnemecek 9y agoAmen! I've been saying this for years. Do you know your MBTI type by any chance?
- oobey 9y agoYes, it's ISTJ.
- bcoates 9y agoI think you're confusing learning with memorization and/or indoctrination? If your lessions are only lecture, discussion, and reading then you can go ahead and skip them and replace them with nothing [1]. It's bunk that some students need lectures and other students need books, but these are only communication tools and they cannot learn knowledge from them. [1] past the point where learning how to read/listen/discuss is itself the goal of the lesson
- Pulcinella 9y agoYou are thinking too broadly about learning styles. Things like practice/hands-on-learning are one good way of teaching, for example. It's not learning styles as in different styles and methods of teaching and learning that have been debunked. It's Learning Styles™ that have been debunked (i.e. Auditory, visual, kinesthetic).
- sinxoveretothex 9y agoThis article is a great example of how to write hundreds of words to say "this doesn't work". This is literally what this article is. "X says learning styles doesn't work", "Y says he's concerned that teachers are taught learning styles even though he thinks they don't work", etc. I was hoping they would at least quote someone explaining the problem simply and offer a potential solution. Instead, the comments here did a better job at that. I nominate Sally Weale as a useless journalist.
- watwut 9y agoDebunking popular but bad science is a good thing. It is enough to say that science is bad. You do not need to replace it with another theory.
- dang 9y agoPersonal attacks aren't ok on HN. Even if it's a bad article (which it may be), that's both a non sequitur and a nasty swipe. Please don't post like that here.
- timthorn 9y agoThe letter itself possibly carries more information than the article: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidence-to-back-idea-of-learning-styles https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidenc...
- lr4444lr 9y agoA much welcome public statement on this matter. When I was teaching and I chanced upon a colleague who was overzealous about the learning styles theory, I used to respond - if you had a child whom you pegged or tested as a "visual learner" and you wanted to teach him how to distinguish between different bird calls, you'd seriously have him do something like study oscilloscope graphs of the sound waves rather than having him actually listen to the calls? Taken to its logical conclusion, it defies reason and even basic experience that any knowledge and skills can be better transmitted when conveyed in the modality that lies in learner's unique strengths.
- julian_1 9y ago> oscilloscope graphs of the sound waves I agree with your point in respect to the over-emphasis of particular leaning styles in the classroom. At the same time the oscilloscope example is intriguing, since I could easily imagine research scientists using FFT, and wavelet decomposition to classify bird-calls as primary research. So I wonder if there is anything intrinsically wrong with the idea of using an oscilloscope in the classroom at lower-levels as part of a teaching strategy? Meanwhile drama classes might be trying to get students to mimic bird calls - which also seems like a valid learning experience.
- lr4444lr 9y agoSure, because in the case where differentiation of very similar signals is necessary, the human ear is too obtuse an organ of measurement. You might show kids the output from such an instrument as a brief exhibit piece in explaining a more relatable scientific fact such a tool would allow us to discover, e.g. that birds can pick out their own chicks' cries from those of their fellow species kin, but that's teaching about the bird's sensitivity. Not developing the learner's ability to analyze that. You would not use an oscilloscope as a means to teach the sparrow's call from the blue jay's from the robin's from the jackdaw's.
- aphextron 9y agoThis myth has always particularly annoyed me. It's like when people say "I'm a visual learner". Of course you are. You are a human being. We all learn things more effectively when they are displayed visually in an intuitive way. It's the same mindset that feeds into people thinking they "just aren't a math person". You're not special, it's just pop science BS designed to make people feel better in their laziness.
- bberrry 9y agoI think there can be some merit to "styles". Personally I have a hard time focusing when reading something (possibly adult ADD but I haven't sought a professional opinion) which is why I find YouTube videos much more helpful if I am to learn something.
- bjt 9y agoDo you think your experience is different from the norm?
- jghn 9y agoIt's at least different to mine. I generally learn much better from reading than watching a video, instructor, etc. I also generally learn better through broader reading than doing exercises and such
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ordu 9y agoThis "style" is just some habits of your attention. Your attention was trained to focus on movie, but was not trained enough to focus on book. You can use some behavioral training approaches to make youself attentive while reading (without much effort), or inattentive while watching movies. So this "style" is no more than a habit, that reinforces itself. This is not some kind of disorder, its just habits. I cannot attentively watch movies full of speaking heads, where no guns, fires, fights and other funny things. I would better read book, article, or something like. And this is not disorder also, just a habit. If I'll need to use movies for learning, I train my attention to concentrate on movies. Its not a problem, though it needs some time and effort.
- andrewflnr 9y agoAnd yet, I continue to see anecdotal evidence that something like learning styles do exist. Granted, they don't always fit the classic visual/kinesthetic/auditory classification. For instance, I often learn a new topic best by reading about it, while some friends do better watching videos. And I think we all know that different explanations on hard topics work for different people. Other people here have talked about stupid things people have done because of a simplistic understanding of learning styles. Ok, fine. Obviously you need to learn a topic in its own medium, and there's limits to what you can teach with song and dance. But let's do enough experiments to actually figure out what's going on, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's clearly something there, IMO, even if it's relatively insignificant.
- karlkatzke 9y agoI think it's more appropriate to say that some people have deficits in taking in information in particular ways. Someone with an auditory processing disorder will not retain spoken information, for instance. What bugs me about the OP article is that they pan "learning styles" consistently without saying what should be used instead, and I have to assume that the instead is something that only makes sense to neuroscientists and looks a lot like "learning styles" if you explain it to a layman.
- ArialAnemone 9y agoPublic Schools are horrific squanderings of societal wealth and innumerable years of cognition. They socialize children into diets that bring on pre-diabetes and diabetes. It's absolute quackery to say that the massive resources spent have anything near a positive return for most kids. Schools are for the benefit of administrators and unionized teachers imo.
- peterwwillis 9y agoSchools are for the benefit of parents.
- ArialAnemone 9y agoSchools are for the benefit of of people who rarely have anything invested in the growth of any one student. It's robbing taxpayers, demanding draconian control of kids, both physically and legally. The money that is funneled into "teaching" kids is obscene. Instead of smaller scale private schools, we have black holes of mismanagement that we call public schooling. And it's for the benefit of people in the ponzi scheme in charge of students. I can't imagine children learning any notable skills. Think of how it utterly fails black communities. Instead of sex segregated them, and destroying the rationale for petty histrionic behavior, you put teens together and enable peacocking behaviors which destroys classroom ambiance. Imagine how stupid you have to be to say "public schools are for the benefit of the children" when rich people use private schools as a way to cement social immobility. It's beyond the pale how many wasted moments exist in the graveyard of bureacratically run education.
- curiouser2 9y agoITT: self righteous dorks who never struggled to learn anything
- kutkloon7 9y ago"[...] research in 2012 among teachers in the UK and Netherlands found that 80% believed individuals learned better when they received information in their preferred learning style." What a weird way to put it. Do the others think it makes absolutely no difference in what form the information is presented?
- ashark 9y ago> “I think the fad about learning styles faded long ago, and I would be surprised if many schools continued to subscribe to the approach. That said, the notion of making teaching and learning more varied in classrooms is helpful and likely to motivate a wider range of students,” he said. LOL no. It's faded in research and education-policy nerd circles, maybe. It's still everywhere in pop culture and among actual k-12 educators. Questioning it will likely get you disapproving looks from teachers, principals, and so on. (at least in the Midwestern US. Like everything else, until someone comes along selling some BS curriculum/training package that tells them it's wrong, they'll continue to think it's true. Source: am married to a teacher who's taught in 3 states, and am [separately] friends with a bunch of others)
- nathanasmith 9y agoI took a hobby related class at the local community college last year and one of the first things the professor had us do was take a quiz to determine our "learning style". For the rest of the semester, she deferred to each person's results when giving personal attention. I had long been aware that learning styles aren't backed up by any real evidence and can even be detrimental, but I figured I'd rather just deal with it than look like the old fogey in the class who thinks he knows everything trying to make the teacher look bad. At any rate, this kind of junk is alive and well at least where I live.
- zorak 9y agoThe Dunning-Kruger is strong in this thread. So many misconceptions!
- oliwarner 9y agoAll my favourite teachers had one thing in common: passion. They liked their subject and they liked teaching it. I don't necessarily disagree with the post or the people behind what's being reported, but telling teachers how to teach seems like you're going to pick away at them, and with it their passion for their job.