Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method
It is true that there are good reasons to question the doctrine of learning styles, at least as presently formulated. But the Telegraph does not inform us why we should believe Baroness Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, when she says so. Does peerage confer psychological insight? Still, Frank Coffield has a point. "I came across labelling such as 'activists' versus 'reflectors', 'globalists' versus 'analysts' and 'left brainers' versus 'right brainers'. There is no scientific justification for any of these terms." There is no good understanding of learning styles as it stands. But it certainly does not follow that we all learn the same way - the senses may well work in concert, but (as someone with thick glasses, I can attest) some senses work more or less well, meaning that each individual may combine the senses differently. Via Joanne Jacobs. Julie Henry, The Telegraph, August 3, 2007. [Link] [Tags: Learning Styles] [Previous][Next]Comments
Re: Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method
Hooray - I can come out of the closet and admit it; I don't know my learning style, or my preferred learning theory. I've taken loads of those questionnaires but always come out differently, and there doesn't seem to be permission to be a bit of all sorts, depending on the subject or the activity or my previous experience. Pete Whitfield pwhitfield.edublogs.org [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]
Re: Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method
Different people have preferred ways of learning but a preference does not imply exclusivity. What is important about understanding learning styles is that an understanding of our preferences helps us understand how to use approaches with which we are less at ease. Richard Rancourt's "Epistemic orientation model" (1990) based on Royce and Powell's "Theory of personality and individual differences" (1983) brings out the fact that all disciplines, professions and cultures have their own epistemology, or, their own preferred ways of acquiring and using knowledge. Individuals choose to learn things not for the "what" but rather for the "how" in so far as the "how" corresponds to their own epistemology. The three modes identified by the above mentioned authors are combined to form six styles with a dominant, a secondary and a subordinate mode. We all are capable of using the three modes and we use the appropriate mode when learning something that requires it. The rational mode favours a deductive analysis, and a conceptual approach, the empirical mode favours an inductive analysis with facts and what can be perceived as a basis while the Noetic mode favours a holistic, intuitive and metamorphic approach to learning. Does this mean that a cabinet maker who probably has an empirical dominant mode cannot learn mathematics (a rational mode way of dong things) or cannot be considered as having a holistic vision (Noetic)? Our friend the cabinet maker probably has a preferred way of learning and analysing, but he or she can surely use alterative ways when required.
Kevin Kelly
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Re: Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method
I have long thought that learning styles are of only marginal use. People use all the styles, and have different preferences at different times. For instance even very abstract thinkers learn to cook or to drive and use different techniques. The style needs to be appropriate to the desired learning outcome (desired by whom is a different point).
I believe that learning styles are only useful in that they can help teachers (and perhaps learners) to think about using a wider range of techniques in their teaching (or learning) than they otherwise might. In other words, it presents a set of techniques.
Tom Franklin [Comment]
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Re: Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method
I spent a fair amount of time with this hypothetical construct in the 70s when it was high on the ASCD program agenda. I still think that it is a useful idea but have seen it misused more often than not. The most egregious abuse IMHO is thinking of it as an immutable personality trait that is either accommodated or not.
A more fruitful approach would be to use it in an effort to understand how preferred learning styles evolve over the lifespan and how they might be broadened and deepened. It is all too easy for most of us to find something that appears to work for us and get stuck in that modality. Like fomenting cognitive dissonance, teaching also obligates us to instigate dissatisfaction with preferred learning styles as well.
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Re: Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method
Albert Calvet, August 5, 2007
Of course learning styles exist, like personality traits. They are not fixed but each person has its own way of getting information. And not only inputing styles, but also other personal aspects of the complex process of creating new knowledge have an important influence. For example, the relationship between the matter presented and the learner previous knowledge, the emotional state, etc.
Are learning styles important in learning? Well, in my opinion it depends on the circumstances. In a classroom, where the flux and form of information is the same for everybody, some of the learners will follow better than others, at the limit getting less learning. If the training is on line, the learning styles should be much less impotants because the learners have so much control on the way they get access to the imformation that any particularity is smoothed over.
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Re: Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method
Learning styles are just marketing buzz words in the marketing driven training industry and, in education, a defensive measure to attempt to confuse and misdirect the public and other critics of the bureaucracy. The Baroness is exactly right--the emperor is wearing no clothes. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]
Re: Professor Pans 'Learning Style' Teaching Method
The push for "learning styles" developed out of the single-mindedness of "teachers" who only lectured and only assigned text readings. Those that litened well and took notes well and read well(for whatever reason) succeeeded - others did not. The "others" were blamed for their lack of motivation, interest, intelligence - anything but the teacher's lack of teaching. When educators began to care that 30-40% of their students weren't learning, they began to search for more "intesting" teaching methods, ie. learning styles. Low and behold, more students were learning. The 60-70% who could succeed in a "verbal/auditory" environment still did fine, but now the "kinesthetic" kids were learning too. I understand the brain research involved in professor Willingham's opinion, however, his rather professorial approach will do more harm than good if we all go back to a single style - whether it's books OR the internet. I think that David Rose and the Universal Design for Learning approach makes more sense - take all the possiblities in mind first, and then design a program which will serve all the customers. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]
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