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Do Students Really Have Different Learning Styles?

76 points by akbarnama 12y ago

Retric 12y ago
I think the context for this is important. <pedantic> So, blind kids get amazing value from a power point slide presentation... </pedantic> Ok, now accepting their argument is clearly wrong in general case. They might be talking about some vaguely defined average child. But, when you start looking at a wide range of things from vision to audio acuity you find people don't clump as much as you might think. In the end it comes down to a cost / benefit analysis on supporting learning sytles vs a generic education. And in that context there are far better ways to spend your money.
- jfarmer 12y ago
  That's not what people mean when they talk about "learning styles" and I'm pretty sure you know that. Heck, it's even right there in the first sentence of the article: > Learning styles — the notion that each student has a particular mode by which he or she learns best, whether it’s visual, auditory or some other sense — is enormously popular. It's the idea that every person as a particular sense or modality through which they "learn best" and it doesn't change with time. It comes attached with the idea that it makes sense to bucket students into "auditory learners," "visual learners," and so on. That in turn informs curricular and pedagogical decisions, e.g., "Make sure this lesson has a visual component." I've been teaching programmers for two years, currently through CodeUnion (http://codeunion.io http://codeunion.io) and formerly through Dev Bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com http://devbootcamp.com), and my personal experience is consistent with two things: 1. The idea of "learning styles" is rubbish 2. EVERYONE believes it, especially students If I had a nickel for every time I've heard my students say something like "This explanation doesn't really work for me — I'm more of a visual learner" I'd be the Scrooge McDuck of nickels.
  - Retric 12y ago
    I agree that the current implementation of the idea is rubbish. However, it is important to note people can be vary bad at a wide range of things. Just as an example, some people really suck at spacial relationships. In that context, covering every base is less important than having multiple approaches.
  - NotAtWork 12y ago
    As a tutor, I've found that certain styles of explanations click more intuitively with some students than with others. Do you have a mechanism to explain this?
    - gress 12y ago
      Since a lot of teaching is shame based, whatever styles people have had the least bad experience with will be easier for them to work with.
    - jfarmer 12y ago
      Happy to dive in, but that's not much to go on! For starters, can you define what you mean by "style of explanation" and give me a few examples? For each example, give me examples of students with whom that style clicked, examples of students with whom it didn't, and your best explanation for why it did or didn't in each case.
  - arghbleargh 12y ago
    I do think "learning styles" can be easily used as an excuse to give up at the first sign of difficulty. However, I'm not sure that it's "rubbish". I've always been very good at spatial reasoning, so I often try to explain things in terms of pictures. Among generally intelligent people, some of them understand me immediately, and others require a lot of tries with different variations on the explanation. I would be tempted to say that the people who don't understand should just be more willing to think spatially instead of being stuck in their other modes. However, then I imagine how it must feel for someone with perfect pitch to try to explain to me how to recognize pitches. I can't do it just by "trying" harder; I don't even understand what it is I'm supposed to be doing. This is not to say that e.g. people who are not good at spatial thinking shouldn't still try to get better at it. But it does lead me to think that to some extent these learning styles really are, if not genetic, at least deeply embedded in our personalities and early childhood development.
    - jfarmer 12y ago
      You'll note that I didn't say they were rubbish BECAUSE students use them as an excuse. What's more, I didn't say that students use "learning styles" as an excuse, only that they believe whole-heartedly in their reality. As evidence of the fact that they believe in their reality, they say things like "This explanation doesn't really work for me — I'm more of a visual learner." Why do you think "learning styles" have any independent reality to begin with? Why do you think the specific sense/modality/medium is of primary importance when it comes to understanding or modeling how people learn?
      - pjc50 12y ago
        This explanation doesn't really work for me — I'm more of a visual learner." Given that people say this, what do you think they mean by saying it?
        jfarmer 12y ago
        It means they believe in the idea of learning styles and that whatever they're currently experiencing is accounted for by that belief. As for how I translate that sentence into something useful for me as a teacher, I choose to hear it as: "Nothing in this explanation relates to anything in my picture of the world." It then becomes a problem of understanding the student's prior experience and current picture of the world. The modality only matters insofar as it establishes congruence with the student's prior experience (IMO).
  - andrewflnr 12y ago
    It seems to me more like you have a problem with students using "learning styles" as a cop-out. I don't know how I compare with others, but I know I'm a visual thinker. So if I'm having trouble understanding something, and I think a visualization will help, then it's my responsibility to try to find one or create one. Have you not noticed that some students are consistently playing with something or tapping their foot as they're listening, while others don't? As I was told, that's part and parcel of "the whole learning style mish-mash", and definitely consistent with my experience. At the same time, it was always made clear to me that people's learning styles are more like linear combinations of the main styles than something you could sort into a bucket. And I've never heard it explicitly said that they were fixed, so I don't think that's essential.
    - jfarmer 12y ago
      No, I didn't say that. I only said that students believe (very strongly) in the "reality" of learning styles and as evidence of this statement they say things like the quote I gave. I do think students sometimes use the idea of "learning styles" as an excuse, although in my experience these are the types of students who will use whatever is within reach as an excuse. That has no bearing on whether "learning styles" actually exist, though.
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    There's another side to that story -- in many cases, the quality of written material or lecture is just not that good. Combined with laziness, it's easy for people to convince themselves that they only learn a particular way. I remember helping the 13 year old daughter struggling with math. IIRC it was a moderately difficult algebra problem -- unless you read the text. The textbook explanation of how to attack that problem was so horrific and convoluted, i did a double take. Pictures are great because they cut out all of the bullshit, flowery language and other nonsense and lay the meat of whatever you are talking about right out there. That's why effective presenters use graphs, etc to underline key points.
- physPop 12y ago
  Did you even read the review article?
  - Retric 12y ago
    Yes, but I don't think my comment was understood. From the linked paper: "Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them. There is also plentiful evidence arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information." ... "We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all. Further research on the use of learning-styles assessment in instruction may in some cases be warranted, but such research needs to be performed appropriately." Their point is not that everyone learns in an identical fashion. It's, there is little evidence you need to tailor instruction to each students individual learning style.
ColinDabritz 12y ago
I feel that everyone can learn in all the major ways, although using a variety of learning styles makes it more engaging and fun. I view learning styles more like food preferences. Sure, I may like Italian, but that doesn't mean I should eat Italian for every meal. Variety is also important. In terms of nutrition requirements, I can get calories from any food and the rest of the requirements in many different ways. Also importantly, the nature of the material may make certain kinds of presentation more useful. Visual for geometry. Auditory for music. Kinesthetic (physical, touch) for sports. They don't have to be solely in those styles, but the core material probably should be, with supporting material in other styles. The easiest way to cater to learning preferences is variety. Have it in oral and written form, graphics and text, hands on experiential. Come at it from all angles. The most surefire bet for learning is to saturate them all, but it's rarely practical, so try to cover at least a couple.
- m-photonic 12y ago
  Exactly. Proponents of the notion of learning styles have focused on individual differences, but it's somewhat of a red herring. The vast majority of people, whatever their strengths may be, benefit from approaching a subject using MULTIPLE learning styles, not just one.
NotAtWork 12y ago
This article seems to measure something orthogonal to learning styles, namely that multiple styles combined and variety/novelty also play a key role. Can someone explain to me what the data in this article has to do with learning styles as they're commonly thought of?
- jfarmer 12y ago
  The concept of "learning styles" is something _we_ invented. It's not as if it has any intrinsic reality as a category, at least until we demonstrate it does. This article is arguing (rightly) that it's not a useful way of thinking about how people learn. Or, at least, obscures the reality of how people _actually_ learn and makes it more difficult for us to explore that reality.
tgb 12y ago
I don't like this article. Here are my main concerns: 1) The review article cited at the start concludes its abstract with this: "Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis. We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all." I would happily replace the entire linked article with these two half paragraphs! Note that this means we don't know there isn't learning styles; we just know that those handful of ones so far tested have proven ineffective. 2) That a classroom does better with a math-through-music approach does not mean that all students do better through that. The cited article for this study doesn't appear to make that claim or any claim about the existence of learning styles (but it's paywalled). Clearly a classroom learns better when instructed in a language that the students understand - does that mean that learning styles don't exist? 3) That classes learn best when given a mixture of styles of information does not mean that there are no learning styles. (If you told me that mixing styles improves a class's learning, that would make me think it more likely that learning styles exist - otherwise it's more likely that there's some optimal single method that is better than trying all available methods.)
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  >> Note that this means we don't know there isn't learning styles; we just know that those handful of ones so far tested have proven ineffective. The ones that have been studied are most likely the most widely-believed and plausible ones.
- grayclhn 12y ago
  Re 3: I think it's likely that there are diminishing returns the longer you present material the same way, and that switching it up makes students more interested. When I read that part, I assumed they were talking about the individual students performing better, not the class in aggregate. If it's student by student, that is (weak) evidence against learning styles.
oinksoft 12y ago
In elementary school, it was always the slow learners who the teachers classified or who self-selected as "kinesthetic learners" when this topic came up: Hands-on teaching was far more patient than lecturing. Lazy students like me were called "visual learners" because we didn't care to bury ourselves in state texts written for 10 year-olds. I sensed that the theory was bunk then, and it's bunk now. From the cited UVA article: http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-October%202010/the-myth-of-learning-full.html http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-Oc... > Third, learning-styles theory has succeeded in becoming > “common knowledge.” Its widespread acceptance serves as > an unfortunately compelling reason to believe it. This > is accompanied by a well-known cognitive phenomenon > called the confirmation bias. That point is made clear by other comments in this thread treating the existence of these "styles" as a matter of fact. Differences between students don't prove that learning is constrained to a single sense. It's a bizarre hypothesis and it only serves educators.
indieclean 12y ago
I recently finished Make It Stick by Peter C Brown, who also says the learning styles myth is bogus. Highly recommended book that changed the way read (I take notes and put them on flashcards). The main point is that effortful retrieval practice is the key to learning effectively for the long-term and such that what you're learning can readily be connected to other ideas. When practicing retrieval (quizzing yourself), he suggests: 1) spacing practice sessions so that it's hard but not impossible to recall 2) interleaving subjects (frustrating, but memories are much more durable and you can more readily connect leanrned ideas with others) 3) varying how you practice (same benefits as above) 4) rephrasing in your own words and attempting to solve tough problems before knowing the solutions
- akbarnama 12y ago
  Great points!! I just did a coursera course, learning how to learn, in which the professor emphasized some of these points. I have started using the Anki software and has helped me. https://class.coursera.org/learning-001/lecture https://class.coursera.org/learning-001/lecture
lazerwalker 12y ago
The traditional "learning styles" might have questionable scientific merits, but Mel Chua (http://melchua.com http://melchua.com) is doing some really interesting research surrounding learning styles in programmers specifically: http://blog.melchua.com/2014/08/12/learning-styles-for-programmers-activereflective/ http://blog.melchua.com/2014/08/12/learning-styles-for-progr...
sarciszewski 12y ago
Shorter article: Learning styles don't exist, including the specific way that subjects are traditionally taught.
tokenadult 12y ago
Annie Murphy Paul, the author of the article kindly submitted here, is a very thoughtful author on psychology and education research. I see she cites the path-breaking article by Daniel Willingham, which led to his Learning Styles FAQ,[1] which I encourage all of my friends here on Hacker News to read to better understand what this issue is about learning styles. People do tend to take somewhat differing approaches to learning new material, but at least part of what I have noticed about effective learners is that they learn new ways of learning, and gain "learning styles" as they grow up and become more versatile in what they can do. [1] http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html
bane 12y ago
I taught an advanced adult course for a number of years. I taught something north of 700 students in 40 and 80 hour courses over that time. I also later developed curriculum for another instructional program involving around 300 hours of instruction time that taught complex technical skills to another 300 people (equivalent to 2 B.S. degrees in terms of class-time) and graduated them as instructors in their subject. So I feel comfortable claiming I'm a professional educator (at least with adults). I also feel comfortable claiming that there are definitely different learning styles. In addition, after being identified as a "special gifted student", I myself went through a nonstop progression of tests and evaluations as a student starting in elementary school and continuing all through high school so I'm extremely familiar with the tests and results being talked about here. I'd say as both a subject of these tests and as a former professional educator, yes, absolutely, students have different learning styles. But I agree with the article that the kinds of styles and methods used to identify the learning modes don't really work. Even worse, once students learn the results of these diagnostic tools, they use this knowledge as a kind of crutch to explain areas they are weak in. I'm sure there's a term for this phenomenon. Students then expect the teacher to treat them as a special snowflake and teach in the mode that they believe they learn most naturally in. I believe that these diagnostic tools are being used incorrectly. They should be used to identify where students have weak modes of learning, and then their education should focus on building up those modes, not streamlining the educational process for efficiency and optimizing only for where students are already strong. It's like a person who already has strong biceps doing nothing but curls in the gym and not only skipping leg day, but telling everybody else in the gym that they don't do legs because they're biceps are already well developed and their legs don't work so well. This is a continuation of the notion that public education is an assembly line process like building cars and needs to optimize for the fastest way to shove knowledge into a student's head. This is a hopelessly dead-end approach to pedagogy. Education should be about teaching people how to learn themselves. If a student opens up multiple modes of learning, they can already multiply their capacity to learn. If you are weak in an area, then you should concentrate in that area. Learning is both a talent and a skill that needs cultivation.
- aik 12y ago
  Interesting. Are you aware of ways of teaching new modes of learning, or even have a list of modes? And whether it can be done with reasonable success (ie. given that people think in different ways, can one person become as competent in other modes or are they limited by their hardware? Are there studies around this?)
jqm 12y ago
I can't believe people don't have different learning styles. For instance, a guy I work with loves training videos. He will sit and watch lecturers and all the videos in sequence and take copious notes. Not me. Unless it's something complex and physical (like changing a car part) I can't abide video instruction. I don't care for audio much either. It's too slow and you can't skim picking out relevant points, nor refer back up quickly to refresh a concept. I don't think my co-worker does this. If he did prefer to read, he would start reading, read every word and not go back to what he read before until he was finished. Having observed the difference in our learning style and our relative skill set, it appears (from my biased point of view) that I know a lot more than he does, and I get a lot more done. But it would be interesting to hear my co-workers take on me. I'm guessing he probably has the view that my "rapid overview and fill-in-the-details as they are needed" approach is flighty, dangerous and inferior to the systematic linear method. And he may have some valid points in this regard. To be fair, we complement each other and work well together as a team.
- smorrow 12y ago
  It's interestng that you should say that, because the reason I don't usually like lecture videos is that they're too fast to keep up with, especially if you're writing notes. The worst thing is a guy talking and clicking through slides both at the same time, and we're talking about slides with equations the like, things that really have to be read and thought about. Then again, I don't like real-life lectures much either, unless I've already read the associated text for that lecture beforehand. I wonder if people like lectures for the same reason that people like brainstorming, group work, etc, which is that it might feel like you're getting more work done than you actually are.
jrapdx3 12y ago
After reading the article and the comments, it sure seems the subject (the "learning styles" hypothesis) arouses considerable passion in supporters and detractors. But polarization may be inevitable when the subject is at best indistinctly defined. Academic learning would surely be associated with high level and complex neuronal circuitry, which would not seem to be easily parsed into a few categorical formulations. Saying someone is a "visual learner" is very likely a vast oversimplification. Thorough neuropsychological evaluation can reveal dozens of specific cognitive abilities and show areas of strength and weakness. Normally the "peaks and valleys" of abilities have modest difference, but there are individuals with great variation: for example, genius level (IQ 180) in some areas, while adjacent skills are just average (IQ 105). Such "unevenness" can produce major difficulty with task performance in school and jobs, as markedly inconsistent abilities can hinder learning or productivity in ways hard to understand and rectify. "Learning style" may be controversial because it is a hard to study, and assessing individuals is too complicated and expensive. The pragmatic approach of using a variety of methods to teach a class of 30 kids is quite sensible. A good teacher knows some students catch on better with one approach vs. another, but in any case, for the students who can learn from any approach the repetition would probably do no harm.
erikb 12y ago
While you might be able to insert knowledge into your brain with any of the better methods there are still methods people prefer. And over the long run you will learn more with your preferred style, because you spent more hours doing it.

76 points by akbarnama 12y ago

I think the context for this is important. <pedantic> So, blind kids get amazing value from a power point slide presentation... </pedantic> Ok, now accepting their argument is clearly wrong in general case. They might be talking about some vaguely defined average child. But, when you start looking at a wide range of things from vision to audio acuity you find people don't clump as much as you might think. In the end it comes down to a cost / benefit analysis on supporting learning sytles vs a generic education. And in that context there are far better ways to spend your money.

jfarmer 12y ago
That's not what people mean when they talk about "learning styles" and I'm pretty sure you know that. Heck, it's even right there in the first sentence of the article: > Learning styles — the notion that each student has a particular mode by which he or she learns best, whether it’s visual, auditory or some other sense — is enormously popular. It's the idea that every person as a particular sense or modality through which they "learn best" and it doesn't change with time. It comes attached with the idea that it makes sense to bucket students into "auditory learners," "visual learners," and so on. That in turn informs curricular and pedagogical decisions, e.g., "Make sure this lesson has a visual component." I've been teaching programmers for two years, currently through CodeUnion (http://codeunion.io http://codeunion.io) and formerly through Dev Bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com http://devbootcamp.com), and my personal experience is consistent with two things: 1. The idea of "learning styles" is rubbish 2. EVERYONE believes it, especially students If I had a nickel for every time I've heard my students say something like "This explanation doesn't really work for me — I'm more of a visual learner" I'd be the Scrooge McDuck of nickels.
- Retric 12y ago
  I agree that the current implementation of the idea is rubbish. However, it is important to note people can be vary bad at a wide range of things. Just as an example, some people really suck at spacial relationships. In that context, covering every base is less important than having multiple approaches.
- NotAtWork 12y ago
  As a tutor, I've found that certain styles of explanations click more intuitively with some students than with others. Do you have a mechanism to explain this?
  - gress 12y ago
    Since a lot of teaching is shame based, whatever styles people have had the least bad experience with will be easier for them to work with.
  - jfarmer 12y ago
    Happy to dive in, but that's not much to go on! For starters, can you define what you mean by "style of explanation" and give me a few examples? For each example, give me examples of students with whom that style clicked, examples of students with whom it didn't, and your best explanation for why it did or didn't in each case.
- arghbleargh 12y ago
  I do think "learning styles" can be easily used as an excuse to give up at the first sign of difficulty. However, I'm not sure that it's "rubbish". I've always been very good at spatial reasoning, so I often try to explain things in terms of pictures. Among generally intelligent people, some of them understand me immediately, and others require a lot of tries with different variations on the explanation. I would be tempted to say that the people who don't understand should just be more willing to think spatially instead of being stuck in their other modes. However, then I imagine how it must feel for someone with perfect pitch to try to explain to me how to recognize pitches. I can't do it just by "trying" harder; I don't even understand what it is I'm supposed to be doing. This is not to say that e.g. people who are not good at spatial thinking shouldn't still try to get better at it. But it does lead me to think that to some extent these learning styles really are, if not genetic, at least deeply embedded in our personalities and early childhood development.
  - jfarmer 12y ago
    You'll note that I didn't say they were rubbish BECAUSE students use them as an excuse. What's more, I didn't say that students use "learning styles" as an excuse, only that they believe whole-heartedly in their reality. As evidence of the fact that they believe in their reality, they say things like "This explanation doesn't really work for me — I'm more of a visual learner." Why do you think "learning styles" have any independent reality to begin with? Why do you think the specific sense/modality/medium is of primary importance when it comes to understanding or modeling how people learn?
    - pjc50 12y ago
      This explanation doesn't really work for me — I'm more of a visual learner." Given that people say this, what do you think they mean by saying it?
      - jfarmer 12y ago
        It means they believe in the idea of learning styles and that whatever they're currently experiencing is accounted for by that belief. As for how I translate that sentence into something useful for me as a teacher, I choose to hear it as: "Nothing in this explanation relates to anything in my picture of the world." It then becomes a problem of understanding the student's prior experience and current picture of the world. The modality only matters insofar as it establishes congruence with the student's prior experience (IMO).
- andrewflnr 12y ago
  It seems to me more like you have a problem with students using "learning styles" as a cop-out. I don't know how I compare with others, but I know I'm a visual thinker. So if I'm having trouble understanding something, and I think a visualization will help, then it's my responsibility to try to find one or create one. Have you not noticed that some students are consistently playing with something or tapping their foot as they're listening, while others don't? As I was told, that's part and parcel of "the whole learning style mish-mash", and definitely consistent with my experience. At the same time, it was always made clear to me that people's learning styles are more like linear combinations of the main styles than something you could sort into a bucket. And I've never heard it explicitly said that they were fixed, so I don't think that's essential.
  - jfarmer 12y ago
    No, I didn't say that. I only said that students believe (very strongly) in the "reality" of learning styles and as evidence of this statement they say things like the quote I gave. I do think students sometimes use the idea of "learning styles" as an excuse, although in my experience these are the types of students who will use whatever is within reach as an excuse. That has no bearing on whether "learning styles" actually exist, though.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  There's another side to that story -- in many cases, the quality of written material or lecture is just not that good. Combined with laziness, it's easy for people to convince themselves that they only learn a particular way. I remember helping the 13 year old daughter struggling with math. IIRC it was a moderately difficult algebra problem -- unless you read the text. The textbook explanation of how to attack that problem was so horrific and convoluted, i did a double take. Pictures are great because they cut out all of the bullshit, flowery language and other nonsense and lay the meat of whatever you are talking about right out there. That's why effective presenters use graphs, etc to underline key points.
physPop 12y ago
Did you even read the review article?
- Retric 12y ago
  Yes, but I don't think my comment was understood. From the linked paper: "Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them. There is also plentiful evidence arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information." ... "We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all. Further research on the use of learning-styles assessment in instruction may in some cases be warranted, but such research needs to be performed appropriately." Their point is not that everyone learns in an identical fashion. It's, there is little evidence you need to tailor instruction to each students individual learning style.

ColinDabritz 12y ago

I feel that everyone can learn in all the major ways, although using a variety of learning styles makes it more engaging and fun. I view learning styles more like food preferences. Sure, I may like Italian, but that doesn't mean I should eat Italian for every meal. Variety is also important. In terms of nutrition requirements, I can get calories from any food and the rest of the requirements in many different ways. Also importantly, the nature of the material may make certain kinds of presentation more useful. Visual for geometry. Auditory for music. Kinesthetic (physical, touch) for sports. They don't have to be solely in those styles, but the core material probably should be, with supporting material in other styles. The easiest way to cater to learning preferences is variety. Have it in oral and written form, graphics and text, hands on experiential. Come at it from all angles. The most surefire bet for learning is to saturate them all, but it's rarely practical, so try to cover at least a couple.

m-photonic 12y ago
Exactly. Proponents of the notion of learning styles have focused on individual differences, but it's somewhat of a red herring. The vast majority of people, whatever their strengths may be, benefit from approaching a subject using MULTIPLE learning styles, not just one.

NotAtWork 12y ago

This article seems to measure something orthogonal to learning styles, namely that multiple styles combined and variety/novelty also play a key role. Can someone explain to me what the data in this article has to do with learning styles as they're commonly thought of?

jfarmer 12y ago
The concept of "learning styles" is something _we_ invented. It's not as if it has any intrinsic reality as a category, at least until we demonstrate it does. This article is arguing (rightly) that it's not a useful way of thinking about how people learn. Or, at least, obscures the reality of how people _actually_ learn and makes it more difficult for us to explore that reality.

tgb 12y ago

I don't like this article. Here are my main concerns: 1) The review article cited at the start concludes its abstract with this: "Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis. We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all." I would happily replace the entire linked article with these two half paragraphs! Note that this means we don't know there isn't learning styles; we just know that those handful of ones so far tested have proven ineffective. 2) That a classroom does better with a math-through-music approach does not mean that all students do better through that. The cited article for this study doesn't appear to make that claim or any claim about the existence of learning styles (but it's paywalled). Clearly a classroom learns better when instructed in a language that the students understand - does that mean that learning styles don't exist? 3) That classes learn best when given a mixture of styles of information does not mean that there are no learning styles. (If you told me that mixing styles improves a class's learning, that would make me think it more likely that learning styles exist - otherwise it's more likely that there's some optimal single method that is better than trying all available methods.)

mtdewcmu 12y ago
>> Note that this means we don't know there isn't learning styles; we just know that those handful of ones so far tested have proven ineffective. The ones that have been studied are most likely the most widely-believed and plausible ones.
grayclhn 12y ago
Re 3: I think it's likely that there are diminishing returns the longer you present material the same way, and that switching it up makes students more interested. When I read that part, I assumed they were talking about the individual students performing better, not the class in aggregate. If it's student by student, that is (weak) evidence against learning styles.

oinksoft 12y ago

In elementary school, it was always the slow learners who the teachers classified or who self-selected as "kinesthetic learners" when this topic came up: Hands-on teaching was far more patient than lecturing. Lazy students like me were called "visual learners" because we didn't care to bury ourselves in state texts written for 10 year-olds. I sensed that the theory was bunk then, and it's bunk now. From the cited UVA article: http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-October%202010/the-myth-of-learning-full.html http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-Oc... > Third, learning-styles theory has succeeded in becoming > “common knowledge.” Its widespread acceptance serves as > an unfortunately compelling reason to believe it. This > is accompanied by a well-known cognitive phenomenon > called the confirmation bias. That point is made clear by other comments in this thread treating the existence of these "styles" as a matter of fact. Differences between students don't prove that learning is constrained to a single sense. It's a bizarre hypothesis and it only serves educators.

indieclean 12y ago

I recently finished Make It Stick by Peter C Brown, who also says the learning styles myth is bogus. Highly recommended book that changed the way read (I take notes and put them on flashcards). The main point is that effortful retrieval practice is the key to learning effectively for the long-term and such that what you're learning can readily be connected to other ideas. When practicing retrieval (quizzing yourself), he suggests: 1) spacing practice sessions so that it's hard but not impossible to recall 2) interleaving subjects (frustrating, but memories are much more durable and you can more readily connect leanrned ideas with others) 3) varying how you practice (same benefits as above) 4) rephrasing in your own words and attempting to solve tough problems before knowing the solutions

akbarnama 12y ago
Great points!! I just did a coursera course, learning how to learn, in which the professor emphasized some of these points. I have started using the Anki software and has helped me. https://class.coursera.org/learning-001/lecture https://class.coursera.org/learning-001/lecture

lazerwalker 12y ago

The traditional "learning styles" might have questionable scientific merits, but Mel Chua (http://melchua.com http://melchua.com) is doing some really interesting research surrounding learning styles in programmers specifically: http://blog.melchua.com/2014/08/12/learning-styles-for-programmers-activereflective/ http://blog.melchua.com/2014/08/12/learning-styles-for-progr...

sarciszewski 12y ago

Shorter article: Learning styles don't exist, including the specific way that subjects are traditionally taught.

tokenadult 12y ago

Annie Murphy Paul, the author of the article kindly submitted here, is a very thoughtful author on psychology and education research. I see she cites the path-breaking article by Daniel Willingham, which led to his Learning Styles FAQ,[1] which I encourage all of my friends here on Hacker News to read to better understand what this issue is about learning styles. People do tend to take somewhat differing approaches to learning new material, but at least part of what I have noticed about effective learners is that they learn new ways of learning, and gain "learning styles" as they grow up and become more versatile in what they can do. [1] http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html

bane 12y ago

I taught an advanced adult course for a number of years. I taught something north of 700 students in 40 and 80 hour courses over that time. I also later developed curriculum for another instructional program involving around 300 hours of instruction time that taught complex technical skills to another 300 people (equivalent to 2 B.S. degrees in terms of class-time) and graduated them as instructors in their subject. So I feel comfortable claiming I'm a professional educator (at least with adults). I also feel comfortable claiming that there are definitely different learning styles. In addition, after being identified as a "special gifted student", I myself went through a nonstop progression of tests and evaluations as a student starting in elementary school and continuing all through high school so I'm extremely familiar with the tests and results being talked about here. I'd say as both a subject of these tests and as a former professional educator, yes, absolutely, students have different learning styles. But I agree with the article that the kinds of styles and methods used to identify the learning modes don't really work. Even worse, once students learn the results of these diagnostic tools, they use this knowledge as a kind of crutch to explain areas they are weak in. I'm sure there's a term for this phenomenon. Students then expect the teacher to treat them as a special snowflake and teach in the mode that they believe they learn most naturally in. I believe that these diagnostic tools are being used incorrectly. They should be used to identify where students have weak modes of learning, and then their education should focus on building up those modes, not streamlining the educational process for efficiency and optimizing only for where students are already strong. It's like a person who already has strong biceps doing nothing but curls in the gym and not only skipping leg day, but telling everybody else in the gym that they don't do legs because they're biceps are already well developed and their legs don't work so well. This is a continuation of the notion that public education is an assembly line process like building cars and needs to optimize for the fastest way to shove knowledge into a student's head. This is a hopelessly dead-end approach to pedagogy. Education should be about teaching people how to learn themselves. If a student opens up multiple modes of learning, they can already multiply their capacity to learn. If you are weak in an area, then you should concentrate in that area. Learning is both a talent and a skill that needs cultivation.

aik 12y ago
Interesting. Are you aware of ways of teaching new modes of learning, or even have a list of modes? And whether it can be done with reasonable success (ie. given that people think in different ways, can one person become as competent in other modes or are they limited by their hardware? Are there studies around this?)

jqm 12y ago

I can't believe people don't have different learning styles. For instance, a guy I work with loves training videos. He will sit and watch lecturers and all the videos in sequence and take copious notes. Not me. Unless it's something complex and physical (like changing a car part) I can't abide video instruction. I don't care for audio much either. It's too slow and you can't skim picking out relevant points, nor refer back up quickly to refresh a concept. I don't think my co-worker does this. If he did prefer to read, he would start reading, read every word and not go back to what he read before until he was finished. Having observed the difference in our learning style and our relative skill set, it appears (from my biased point of view) that I know a lot more than he does, and I get a lot more done. But it would be interesting to hear my co-workers take on me. I'm guessing he probably has the view that my "rapid overview and fill-in-the-details as they are needed" approach is flighty, dangerous and inferior to the systematic linear method. And he may have some valid points in this regard. To be fair, we complement each other and work well together as a team.

smorrow 12y ago
It's interestng that you should say that, because the reason I don't usually like lecture videos is that they're too fast to keep up with, especially if you're writing notes. The worst thing is a guy talking and clicking through slides both at the same time, and we're talking about slides with equations the like, things that really have to be read and thought about. Then again, I don't like real-life lectures much either, unless I've already read the associated text for that lecture beforehand. I wonder if people like lectures for the same reason that people like brainstorming, group work, etc, which is that it might feel like you're getting more work done than you actually are.

jrapdx3 12y ago

After reading the article and the comments, it sure seems the subject (the "learning styles" hypothesis) arouses considerable passion in supporters and detractors. But polarization may be inevitable when the subject is at best indistinctly defined. Academic learning would surely be associated with high level and complex neuronal circuitry, which would not seem to be easily parsed into a few categorical formulations. Saying someone is a "visual learner" is very likely a vast oversimplification. Thorough neuropsychological evaluation can reveal dozens of specific cognitive abilities and show areas of strength and weakness. Normally the "peaks and valleys" of abilities have modest difference, but there are individuals with great variation: for example, genius level (IQ 180) in some areas, while adjacent skills are just average (IQ 105). Such "unevenness" can produce major difficulty with task performance in school and jobs, as markedly inconsistent abilities can hinder learning or productivity in ways hard to understand and rectify. "Learning style" may be controversial because it is a hard to study, and assessing individuals is too complicated and expensive. The pragmatic approach of using a variety of methods to teach a class of 30 kids is quite sensible. A good teacher knows some students catch on better with one approach vs. another, but in any case, for the students who can learn from any approach the repetition would probably do no harm.

erikb 12y ago

While you might be able to insert knowledge into your brain with any of the better methods there are still methods people prefer. And over the long run you will learn more with your preferred style, because you spent more hours doing it.