There seems to be a stir among groups in higher ed regarding a recent piece on NPR titled “Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely” broadcast on August 29th.
To paraphrase the issue: A small industry has grown up around the concept that some people learn better from a verbal lesson, while others learn better when information is presented in a visual manner. Recent research (see press release on psychologicalscience.org from December 2009) suggests that most research supporting the concept of “learning styles” fails to satisfy scientific validity.
Do "learning styles" truly exist? Research suggests not...
In the recent discussion resulting from this piece on NPR, some seem relieved that the concept of “learning styles” has been debunked in that statements such as “I’m a visual learner,” etc. are commonly used by students to avoid putting forth necessary effort to succeed in a course. Others acknowledge the research, yet say that caution should be exercised as not to further marginalize those with clinical learning disabilities.
There is also an emphasis in the discussion on the need to recognize that, although students may not necessarily have different “learning styles”, it is still essential to provide different methods of presenting the same information to enhance learning for all students.
What are your thoughts on the piece? Feel free to comment below.
2 Comments
The problem is that what gets conflated is alternate presentation, multichannel encoding, and – to a certain extent – Garner’s Multiple Intelligences construct.
The base conceit of learning styles is that any given person has a fixed learning style and when a lesson is constructed to conform to that style, that person will *always* learn more readily. The key portion that’s missing here is that there is no recognition of content domain.
Visual learners will learn about Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony by what? Watching an oscilloscope? Reading the sheet music? I don’t think so. Show me the audio learner who learns to ride a bicycle by listening to a description of how they should pedal and steer at the same time.
An additional issue that learning styles ignores is context. What might work for me today could well not work for me tomorrow in the same subject domain. Perhaps I didn’t get enough sleep, or I had a flat tire on the way to campus.
Alternate representations and repetition do work, so putting together lessons that capitalize on various representations of the same concepts and ideas is always a good idea. Attributing any efficacy to learning styles when any benefit can be nicely explained by simpler constructs requires considerably more and better research than has been presented to date.
JMO. YMMV.
Nathan, I couldn’t agree with you more. I’d hope a teacher would have more than one way to present a topic as a way of ensuring more than a few students understand the issue at hand.
What also bothers me about the learning styles argument is that there is an inherent value judgment attached to it — teaching by lecture is bad because the audience isn’t necessarily made up of only auditory learners. It is enough to make a good lecturer throw up his/her hands in disgust.
(and I know JMO — just my opinion — but what is YMMV?)