Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
I was more or less taught this in pre-teaching graduate school by someone in the psychology department and it directly contradicted what many in the education school were promoting. The idea that teachers should vary their approach and make an effort to be engaging seemed like common sense to me. I don't mean to sound like an apologist for dry presentations or teacher-centered pedagogy, but I am very glad to have some validation for my skepticism regarding "visual learners" and the like. If you have come to believe that you have a biologically determined learning style, consider the possibility that you have internalized an excuse not to struggle with lessons that require more of your patience. What happens when all the students who have come to think of themselves as "visual learners" shut down during a text-heavy lesson? Even if you have study strengths and weaknesses, turning away from lessons presented in the less ideal way causes more damage than teachers who only do things their way with no regard to variety.
Put another way: the "visual learner" trap wrongly puts the responsibility for learning with the teacher instead of the student. Learn as much as you can from the teachers you have. Hopefully some of them have adopted strategies that particularly appeal to you. Great. That's a bonus for you. Thinking that you have a right to be taught in just the right way is a product of educational vanity, not research.
7 comments:
I completely agree with you, when someone makes the excuse of them being a "visual learner" then they are placing restrictions on themselves and setting themselves to fail. Being confident that you can learn the material no matter how it is taught will give you an edge in life and in school. I took a psychology during the summer and my teacher touched on this subject; humans feel better about themselves when they place the blame of them failing on their peers or teachers this causes student to use "lame" excuses about their learning methods to hide their insecurity or inability to understand the material.
This is a very interesting article. I do agree with the notion that too much emphasis should not be placed on "learning styles," as this can create excuses for students who are not motivated. However, as the article points out, "[s]tudent traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules," suggesting that creativity in the classroom can still benefit students' performance.
I want to quickly bring up a small instance of spin I noticed in this New York Times article; the article claims that "[i]n a study recently posted online by the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology... children who had studied mixed sets did twice as well as the others, outscoring them 77 percent to 38 percent," which seems to support the idea that children learn better doing mixed problem sets. However, the actual research paper makes it clear in its declaration of limitations that "[a]lthough the effects of interleaving reported here were large, it remains unknown whether these effects will generalize to other kinds of materials and procedures." Also, the sample size of 24 was relatively small. Furthermore, "[a]cross all problems in the partial-problem phase, mean accuracy was far worse when practice problems were interleaved rather than blocked." In short, I think we should be a little cautious concerning newspaper articles making use of scientific reports, since they rarely report limitations of studies.
Overall, however, I believe the argument the New York Times article makes is valid; I generally observe that motivated students learn and succeed regardless of teaching style and I believe that there are students who take consolation in the false belief that they just "learn differently."
Nice tie-in with the spin comment, Peter.
I was actually interested in a different idea covered in the article: "Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time."
I know that many of us have spent countless nights cramming for an exam, spending three hours focusing on just one subject while we read over our notes or review textbook chapters. True, this method may help us remember information for the test the next day, but does this cramming help us really learn the material and remember it in the long run? As the article asserts, "Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out."
This idea could also be used as an argument in favor of the type of school schedule that we have at Aragon. I often dream of having a block schedule like the one at San Mateo or Hillsdale high schools, in which students only attend 3-4 longer classes per day. I've envied this schedule because it seems as though the students receive less work to do outside of school, and I've wondered why Aragon hasn't made the switch. But maybe moving from one fifty minute class to another, jumping from science to english to math, is what keeps our school's test scores so high. Is it possible that Aragon is correct in having students attend every class, every day?
-Jessia Hoffman
I think this article is very interesting as well. I took AP Psychology last year and even in our textbook, which is not the most updated version, it mentions that there is no such thing as being "right-brained" or "left-brained." We simply use both sides of our brain for all types of thinking. Granted, we might use one side more than the other for different types of thinking, but this does not mean that we can be identified as a right or left-brained learner, even though this term probably shouldn't exist, since it scientifically does not exist.
However, one could argue that society has become to afraid of calling children out on excuses and laziness, partially because we emphasize educating the youth. Another trend that seems to be quite popular these days is tolerance, or rather, the protests against intolerance (religiously, societally). While this article could be labeled as "intolerant" if the data is to be taken as truth, I greatly prefer this to the severe push for tolerance I see a lot these days in my own life and in the media.
I wrote a pretty lengthy comment this afternoon, but it seems that it didn't get published. I'm not very good with technology...
A summary of my comment: I found a different part of the article to be particularly interesting. The article asserted that when people switch from one area of study to another, they are more likely to remember the material. This got me thinking about two things:
Firstly, I know that many of us have spent countless nights cramming for three hours or more for a test the next day. Although this method may win us a passing grade, do we actually remember any of the information in the long-run? There could definitely be some truth in this idea that sticking to just one subject for an extended period of time hinders our ability to understand and remember what we supposedly "learn."
Secondly, this idea could be used as an argument in favor of Aragon's type to schedule. I have often dreamed of going to a school with a block schedule, where students attend only 3 to 4 longer classes per day. I've always thought that this would be a favorable way to spend my day and would result in less work to be done at home. However, as our schedule at Aragon keeps us moving from one 50-minute period to another, perhaps constantly switching from math to english to science is what keeps our school's test scores so high. Is it possible that people learn better when they exercise different parts of their brains instead of immersing themselves in just one subject?
-Jessia Hoffman
I tend to disagree with both the article and the comments, so I'll play a bit of the devil's advocate. While I agree with Mr. Silton that the burden of learning should be placed on the student, not on the teacher, I also believe that the teacher should at least attempt to engage students through a variety of approaches to teach the same material. As Jessia mentioned, switching from one subject to another increases the ability to remember the information. Does this not also apply to the way the information is remembered? I would tend to believe that a student who is exposed to one fact through a lecture, a video, and a textbook is more likely to remember it than if he had only received the information one way. Perhaps that is why students tend to like teachers who teach with a variety of techniques. While teachers do not need to cater specifically to one student with one learning style, years of anecdotal evidence shows students learn better when they enjoy the class, which may require a more multi-media approach.
Kathy, playing Devil's advocate means taking a position other than your own. You are not a devil for disagreeing!
I think we mostly agree anyway. Aragon strives for and in fact pioneered pedagogy like you describe without ever indulging wide-scale enabling like I am overreacting to. It's actually pretty rare, but still frustrating to deal with people who make excuses for not reading in a history class. That's just ridiculous.
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