Metalearning and Learning Styles
Donald Clark, Big Dog, Little Dog , January 20, 2010.

Interesting take on learning styles: Clark argues you get more benefit by teaching against them. For example, "while verbal learners may like to read about something rather than actually try it, they do much better when they actually apply the skills (kinesthetic), rather than reading about it." My own take is that, while this may work on a one-time or infrequent basis, because of the novelty or irritation factor, if you try to do this every day you just end up with a bunch of bored and irritated students. Still, that's something that could be looked at (I guess, if you measure the "success" of learning as the retention and repetition by a student of a small instructor-defined set of data).

A couple of other things, though. First, it occurs to me that if there's no such thing as "learning styles" (somehow defined) then there are no grounds for student-selected or learner-centered learning; just put all instruction into the same box, and deliver it the same way, because individual preferences don't matter. Whiuch seems to me to be a reductio.

And second, people have got to stop repeating the old saw that "scientific studies can normally only prove what exists, not what does not exist." It's just not true! You can prove there are no dogs in my living room, that there are no 15-minute interruptions in gravity every hour on the hour, that there are no aircraft made of water (or even ice!), that there is no phlogiston, that there are no numbers greater than three and less than two. The old saw applies only to a special class of entities: entities that have no consequences, entities that are outside our experience, and entities that cannot be tested. Everything else can be known to exist or not exist. (Hits Today: 0 Total: 749) [Direct Link] [Tags: Learning Styles, Experience]

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Re: Metalearning and Learning Styles

Anymouse, January 22, 2010

Isn't the issue not so much that there are no learning styles, but that there is no good evidence that attempting to identify and account for them increases the quality of the educational experience? Of course that might be accounted for by the fact that most studies seem to be looking at it in terms of teaching groups and overall outcomes, where if the movement is toward truly individual educational experiences... [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Metalearning and Learning Styles

Stephen Downes, January 22, 2010

Short answer: yes. The debate about learning styles is more a debate about what counts as a learning experience than a debate about whether individual differences exist. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Metalearning and Learning Styles

Frank Lowney, January 23, 2010

I think that we can demonstrate that there are preferred learning styles through observation and subject's self-report but what good does that knowledge do? For one thing, we could then reframe instruction to better align with a preferred learning style. This might be defensible for remediation - to get someone caught up.

Naturally or rationally, learners tend to prefer the styles that are most comfortable and productive for them. They may not be the best and most effective tactic but they are what I'm comfy with.

Better, I think, would be to also endeavor to broaden a students' preferred learning styles by helping them become comfortable with other approaches to learning. Learning how to learn is the ultimate goal of education and reinforcing a preferred learning style by pandering exclusively to it is counter-productive of that goal.
[Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Metalearning and Learning Styles

Stephen Downes, January 23, 2010

Yes. This accords with the data I've seen, that learning styles matter a lot more for more inexperienced (and hence, less flexible) learners. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Metalearning and Learning Styles

Anymouse, January 25, 2010

Learning styles work great for a Hawthorn Effect. My style is "placebo."

Are we punishing brevity, here, Stephen? I just got a message from the above one-liner: Comments must be long enough to mean something.

jay [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

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