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For 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, visua

For 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 ago
I 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 ago
  It 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 ago
    The 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.
  - gizmo686 9y ago
    It depends who "you" are. If you are a student, your job is to maximize your learning given the instruction provided [0]. If you are a teacher, your job is to maximize your teaching given your students ability. One way to do this might be to train the student to learn a certain way. Another way to do this might be to train yourself to teach a certain way. The optimal solution probably involves having both students trained to learn, and teachers trained to teach. This begs the question of what "optimal teaching" is. More specifically, is optimal teaching lectures? I don't know the answer to this question, but it sure is useful to have scientists looking into it. >Students need to be able to learn from the world they live in, not from some meticulously sterilized learning laboratory. So, not from lectures? [0] or seek out more appropriate instruction.
    - Retra 9y ago
      Lectures serve a purpose. People tend treat them like comedy shows where they get a series of punchlines and hope it gives them a satisfying giggle of enlightenment. You're supposed to walk into a lecture already knowing the punchlines. Then you can spend that time exploring how to optimally organize the information in your brain and cleaning up misunderstandings. It is almost impossible to pay attention to a full lecture. Your mind will wander. That's why you have to have a cursory familiarity before you approach them. And then you can enjoy having your mind wander, because it will wander into good questions, insights, and interesting relationships. Learning will happen. If you're prepared. If someone isn't learning during a lecture, it's because they're not spending enough time on the subject outside of the lectures. It's not because they have an alternative "learning style". That would be like saying sitting on the couch is an "alternative dancing style." It's not a matter of style, it's a matter of understanding where you have to put your effort to achieve those goals. Maybe they weren't taught to do it. Maybe they've just never tried. Maybe things are in the way. In the end, lectures are cheap. And this matters. You need to learn how to extract good knowledge from cheap sources. If you can't do that, then good luck convincing anybody to invest more in you over those that can.
      - gizmo686 9y ago
        I am not defending the concept of "learning styles"; the scientists cited in the article are undoubtedly more qualified that I on that subject. I was responding to the claim that the problem is students who cannot learn from lectures, and the solution is to teach children to learn from lectures. That might be the case; but I was pointing out that another option to consider was changing our method of instruction (either away from lectures entirely, to a hybrid system, or even to a better form of lectures); and it is counter productive to dismiss this path out of hand. I will also point out that the article is an attack on "learning styles", not a defense of lectures. Responding to some of your points: >You're supposed to walk into a lecture already knowing the punchlines. This was not my experience through high-school. Most of my class's in high-school and before would assign readings after the corresponding lecture; often times I would not even know what to study before the lecture. Even in college my experience is different. Ignoring the useless lectures, I found that most of my lectures were more useful before I studied the material. This is probably heavily biased by subject matter: most of my useful lectures are in math, where the lecture serves as a broad overview of the material, which serves as a foundation for when I open the textbook to dig into the details. [0]. In contrast, in my linguistic classes, it is essential that I read the material before class: the lecture would simply not make sense without the reading, and what was being presented in lecture is often not present in the textbook. Having said that, and thinking more about those classes, it seems like my linguistics professors are aware of these issues: while textbook readings come before lectures, research paper readings are almost always come between lectures (eg. we would talk about an experiment and the results, then read the paper at home, then talk about the results again). Again, the question is not lectures vs learning styles. The question in the article is "learning styles?", to which the answer seems to be no. This does not necessarily mean that the answer is lectures. And it almost certainly does not mean lectures in their current form. [0] As an aside, this is probably a deficit in my ability to learn math. The "correct" way to learn math is to first go over the material once, then go back and understand the material in a second go-through. I have trouble doing the first step without the lecture environment forcing me not to jump straight to the second.
  - posterboy 9y ago
    Often enough the lecturer is the problem and cannot just be changed. That's a bold claim, sure, but in my experience not an uncommon opinion. "Lectures" I guess is directed at university classes, so your second paragraph seems slightly detached from the first one and from the topic of primary education.
- jordigh 9y ago
  > For example, I mainly learn by doing or reading. If someone gives me a lecture I will remember almost nothing later. The myth here is that you might think you're different than others in this regard. Pretty much every human can easily space out during a lecture. Pretty much every human can learn something better if they do it themselves or can understand a graph better than a list of numbers. Everyone is a visual learner, everyone learns by doing. A lesson should incorporate all of these aspects.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    I am different from others. I have a combination of genetic traits plus life experience that makes me different. So is everybody else different from others. Some more extroverted, some more introverted. Some learn better visually, some kinesthetic, some auditive. This doesn't mean someone is exclusively visual but there certainly are preferences.
    - Glyptodon 9y ago
      People having preferences doesn't mean it's good for them to always have those preferences catered to or that their preferences actually match any empirical evidence evaluating their personal learning performance. It's even possible that people might decide "I don't learn this way" and tune out in situations where they could still learn if they latch onto only using their preferred "style."
    - dragandj 9y ago
      You cannot learn dancing by singing, whatever preferences you have. You have to dance. That's what the article is about.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        I can learn dancing by observing other dancers or I can learn dancing by someone telling me the steps. Some people prefer the first approach, some the second. There is no single way to learn dancing.
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  Is reading "visual"? Lectures are auditory? Although you can also see the lecturer probably... Why not just say you learn better by reading? What is gained by dubiously subjectively categorizing everything into just "auditory", "visual", or "kinesthetic"?
- joeberon 9y ago
  No one gets anything straight from the lecture though. I don't know a single person who managed to follow a physics lecture course all the way through without getting lost at some point. I think the most important part of learning is repetition, you have to learn the content multiple times before it fully sinks in. Once from the lectures, then going through the lecture notes, then (maybe) the book, then problems, then exam questions. Repetition is key
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cestith 9y ago
One of the main problems they identify in the article is lack of flexibility in students who are approached as one style of learner. Rather than narrowing it to one style per student, maybe the teachers could have audio, video, written, and hands-on experiences mixed in for all students. Then, if a particular student needs extra help, that student might get some reinforcement in a particular style. I haven't done the research, but it may be just as important based on the anecdotal evidence that certain types of lesson are more suited to different styles of teaching as much or more than the students are. It may even be that Timmy learns history better by reading while Tommy gets a better sense by looking at maps while talking about it, but Tommy can picture geography pretty well in his head while Timmy needs lots of diagrams.
vorg 9y ago
> Timmy is a kinesthetic learner? He should learn to calculate voltage through dance I think learning to calculate voltage kinesthetically means that Timmy should use his hands to build a little circuit, and be told or shown how the voltage levels work while he's building the thing.
- Pulcinella 9y ago
  You would think, but every material I've seen or been taught about learning styles is that hands on is separate from kinesthetic learning. Kinesthetic really is like dancing, hand movements, and other physical mnemonics. Learning styles™ really are that dumb.

maxxxxx 9y ago

I 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 ago
It 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 ago
  The 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.
- gizmo686 9y ago
  It depends who "you" are. If you are a student, your job is to maximize your learning given the instruction provided [0]. If you are a teacher, your job is to maximize your teaching given your students ability. One way to do this might be to train the student to learn a certain way. Another way to do this might be to train yourself to teach a certain way. The optimal solution probably involves having both students trained to learn, and teachers trained to teach. This begs the question of what "optimal teaching" is. More specifically, is optimal teaching lectures? I don't know the answer to this question, but it sure is useful to have scientists looking into it. >Students need to be able to learn from the world they live in, not from some meticulously sterilized learning laboratory. So, not from lectures? [0] or seek out more appropriate instruction.
  - Retra 9y ago
    Lectures serve a purpose. People tend treat them like comedy shows where they get a series of punchlines and hope it gives them a satisfying giggle of enlightenment. You're supposed to walk into a lecture already knowing the punchlines. Then you can spend that time exploring how to optimally organize the information in your brain and cleaning up misunderstandings. It is almost impossible to pay attention to a full lecture. Your mind will wander. That's why you have to have a cursory familiarity before you approach them. And then you can enjoy having your mind wander, because it will wander into good questions, insights, and interesting relationships. Learning will happen. If you're prepared. If someone isn't learning during a lecture, it's because they're not spending enough time on the subject outside of the lectures. It's not because they have an alternative "learning style". That would be like saying sitting on the couch is an "alternative dancing style." It's not a matter of style, it's a matter of understanding where you have to put your effort to achieve those goals. Maybe they weren't taught to do it. Maybe they've just never tried. Maybe things are in the way. In the end, lectures are cheap. And this matters. You need to learn how to extract good knowledge from cheap sources. If you can't do that, then good luck convincing anybody to invest more in you over those that can.
    - gizmo686 9y ago
      I am not defending the concept of "learning styles"; the scientists cited in the article are undoubtedly more qualified that I on that subject. I was responding to the claim that the problem is students who cannot learn from lectures, and the solution is to teach children to learn from lectures. That might be the case; but I was pointing out that another option to consider was changing our method of instruction (either away from lectures entirely, to a hybrid system, or even to a better form of lectures); and it is counter productive to dismiss this path out of hand. I will also point out that the article is an attack on "learning styles", not a defense of lectures. Responding to some of your points: >You're supposed to walk into a lecture already knowing the punchlines. This was not my experience through high-school. Most of my class's in high-school and before would assign readings after the corresponding lecture; often times I would not even know what to study before the lecture. Even in college my experience is different. Ignoring the useless lectures, I found that most of my lectures were more useful before I studied the material. This is probably heavily biased by subject matter: most of my useful lectures are in math, where the lecture serves as a broad overview of the material, which serves as a foundation for when I open the textbook to dig into the details. [0]. In contrast, in my linguistic classes, it is essential that I read the material before class: the lecture would simply not make sense without the reading, and what was being presented in lecture is often not present in the textbook. Having said that, and thinking more about those classes, it seems like my linguistics professors are aware of these issues: while textbook readings come before lectures, research paper readings are almost always come between lectures (eg. we would talk about an experiment and the results, then read the paper at home, then talk about the results again). Again, the question is not lectures vs learning styles. The question in the article is "learning styles?", to which the answer seems to be no. This does not necessarily mean that the answer is lectures. And it almost certainly does not mean lectures in their current form. [0] As an aside, this is probably a deficit in my ability to learn math. The "correct" way to learn math is to first go over the material once, then go back and understand the material in a second go-through. I have trouble doing the first step without the lecture environment forcing me not to jump straight to the second.
- posterboy 9y ago
  Often enough the lecturer is the problem and cannot just be changed. That's a bold claim, sure, but in my experience not an uncommon opinion. "Lectures" I guess is directed at university classes, so your second paragraph seems slightly detached from the first one and from the topic of primary education.
jordigh 9y ago
> For example, I mainly learn by doing or reading. If someone gives me a lecture I will remember almost nothing later. The myth here is that you might think you're different than others in this regard. Pretty much every human can easily space out during a lecture. Pretty much every human can learn something better if they do it themselves or can understand a graph better than a list of numbers. Everyone is a visual learner, everyone learns by doing. A lesson should incorporate all of these aspects.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I am different from others. I have a combination of genetic traits plus life experience that makes me different. So is everybody else different from others. Some more extroverted, some more introverted. Some learn better visually, some kinesthetic, some auditive. This doesn't mean someone is exclusively visual but there certainly are preferences.
  - Glyptodon 9y ago
    People having preferences doesn't mean it's good for them to always have those preferences catered to or that their preferences actually match any empirical evidence evaluating their personal learning performance. It's even possible that people might decide "I don't learn this way" and tune out in situations where they could still learn if they latch onto only using their preferred "style."
  - dragandj 9y ago
    You cannot learn dancing by singing, whatever preferences you have. You have to dance. That's what the article is about.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      I can learn dancing by observing other dancers or I can learn dancing by someone telling me the steps. Some people prefer the first approach, some the second. There is no single way to learn dancing.
nerfhammer 9y ago
Is reading "visual"? Lectures are auditory? Although you can also see the lecturer probably... Why not just say you learn better by reading? What is gained by dubiously subjectively categorizing everything into just "auditory", "visual", or "kinesthetic"?
joeberon 9y ago
No one gets anything straight from the lecture though. I don't know a single person who managed to follow a physics lecture course all the way through without getting lost at some point. I think the most important part of learning is repetition, you have to learn the content multiple times before it fully sinks in. Once from the lectures, then going through the lecture notes, then (maybe) the book, then problems, then exam questions. Repetition is key

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cestith 9y ago

One of the main problems they identify in the article is lack of flexibility in students who are approached as one style of learner. Rather than narrowing it to one style per student, maybe the teachers could have audio, video, written, and hands-on experiences mixed in for all students. Then, if a particular student needs extra help, that student might get some reinforcement in a particular style. I haven't done the research, but it may be just as important based on the anecdotal evidence that certain types of lesson are more suited to different styles of teaching as much or more than the students are. It may even be that Timmy learns history better by reading while Tommy gets a better sense by looking at maps while talking about it, but Tommy can picture geography pretty well in his head while Timmy needs lots of diagrams.

vorg 9y ago

> Timmy is a kinesthetic learner? He should learn to calculate voltage through dance I think learning to calculate voltage kinesthetically means that Timmy should use his hands to build a little circuit, and be told or shown how the voltage levels work while he's building the thing.

Pulcinella 9y ago
You would think, but every material I've seen or been taught about learning styles is that hands on is separate from kinesthetic learning. Kinesthetic really is like dancing, hand movements, and other physical mnemonics. Learning styles™ really are that dumb.