Teaching to learning styles, what hogwash

by | Wednesday, December 16, 2009

There is an article in today’s Chronicle titled Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students.

I have been somewhat skeptical of the learning styles literature for a while, not the least for hearing the phrase being bandied about without much thought. I have heard people claim without much evidence, that today’s kids are visual learners. I have heard a teacher say that as a consequence, that visual learners prefer reading text from a Powerpoint slide, rather than read it on a blackboard! (Those who know me that I am rarely at a loss for words, but that statement truly struck me dumb! In Wolfgang Pauli’s words, that statement was not even wrong.) I have also had students claim that they did not do well in a certain course because it did not match their learning style!

Anyway, the study reported in the article

… does not dispute the existence of learning styles. But it asserts that no one has ever proved that any particular style of instruction simultaneously helps students who have one learning style while also harming students who have a different learning style.

What does this non-finding mean for practitioners (teachers and professors)?

The article says that more important than matching learning style to teaching style may be matching teaching style with the content to be taught. Here’s a key quote:

What this means for instructors, Mr. Pashler says, is that they should not waste any time or energy trying to determine the composition of learning styles in their classrooms. (Are 50 percent of my students visual learners? Are 20 percent of them kinesthetic learners?)

Instead, teachers should worry about matching their instruction to the content they are teaching. Some concepts are best taught through hands-on work, some are best taught through lectures, and some are best taught through group discussions.

This makes so much sense to me. Understanding the deep relationship between content and pedagogy is at the heart of Shulman’s idea of pedagogical content knowledge, the forerunner of the TPACK framework.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Crayons are the future: New article on technology & creativity

 Over the past year or so I have moved my line of research into teacher creativity particularly focusing on ideas related to trans-disciplinary creativity and what that means for teaching and learning in the 21st century. In this effort I am joined by an awesome group...

Keynote Presentation: AI in Education Summit

Keynote Presentation: AI in Education Summit

Note: The image above is the result of a two-stage creative process—done in collaboration with AI. Dall-E was tasked, over multiple iterations, to craft a woodcut-style image, to abstractly capture the idea of AI and education, with dark and light motifs, aiming to...

The mathematical “i”

I guess 'tis the season of Math-Po's! Sue VanHattum, whose challenge started all this, commented on my recent Math-Po (Math-Po (Mathematical Poetry): Goldbach’s Conjecture) by providing an example of her own writing, a poem titled Imaginary Numbers Do the Trick. That...

Of garbage cans and psychological media

This has been a day of sad news from Stanford University. I blogged about the passing away of Dr. Nalini Ambady (see blog post here). I will digress a bit before I describe the second piece of news because the connection to me (and my work) is much more salient. Back...

How to fix your Indian accent using AI

How to fix your Indian accent using AI

Featured image design © Punya Mishra (background image courtsey PxHere) There are many meanings to the phrase "having a voice." It can mean whether you are present and acknowledged within a space - but most literally it means what you say and how you speak? And...

How to complete a half-marathon

I completed the Capital City River Run Half Marathon today. This race has become an annual event for me, this being my 7th outing so far (the first three years being a 10 mile run before it shifted into a half-maraton). [See links here, here and here]. I completed the...

Eye Twisters

Eye Twisters: Ambigrams & other Visual Puzzles to Amaze and Entertain is a book edited by Burkard Polster, a professor of mathematics at Monash University. It features some of my work... From the back cover: Eye Twisters is all about ambigrams--words that are...

TPACK: A podcast

I just discovered a podcast about TPACK. The folks over at GenTech created a podcast back in September 2007. Check it out here or alternatively here. As they describe it, "In this episode of GenTech, the boys discuss the framework itself and how it may be used as a...

Representing $$, two different ways

The power of serendipity... A few minutes ago I received a note via Facebook / Ken Dirkin providing a link to Where are your taxes going for 2010?. A few minutes later, via StumbleUpon, I came across this: The MasterCard Commercial I’d Like To See. Now each of these...

10 Comments

  1. Mary Brown

    To Mary,

    You see it confusing because your reason “to be honest I haven’t got the time to investigate the learning styles of each and every student”.

    But i think this post serves as a call for this to make better education for our young generation. Why don’t we try to make change to make things better?

    Reply
  2. Mary

    Yes I think it’s quite confusing too. I frequently have larger classes (20+)and to be honest I haven’t got the time to investigate the learning styles of each and every student. I tend to create my learning/teaching materials to cater to a variety of sytles.

    Reply
  3. Claire Parker

    Great post! Not only your words but the pictures can say too. I do agree with you. It’s hard to go through the depth of content and pedagogy but it’s really needed

    Reply
  4. Susan Ireland

    yes I agree it’s very difficult to cater to different learning styles in a class of 20+ students. I find that I try to encorporate a variety of techniques into my teaching. If a student has an identifiable learning style then that is a bonus for me.

    Reply
  5. Dusty Dilchand

    I think some children do learn better in one way. For example, I remember learning better when there’s something to read. I don’t learn much during lectures. But I do believe more research has to done in regards to teaching style – I believe there’s more to it than what we currently know.

    Reply
  6. Patrick Gillespie

    I teach various levels of high school chemistry and physics. My students range from learning disabled to AP students. In any given class, there is a diverse grouping of learning styles, and I subscribe to using several different strategies for any given topic. From my experience, students do have learning styles that more effective for them as individuals- some do better with written word, some with lecture format, some doing lab work, some with simulations, some with problem solving. Trying to incorporate several approaches helps most, and doesn’t seem to hurt any. However, I think using only one strategy can leave some less effectively taught than others.

    Reply
  7. Jonathan Selbig

    As a lower elementary teacher, I would have to say that “learning styles” and “teaching styles” are what get my students and myself through the day. As a teacher, you have to be engaging for ALL students. Some students do learn differently than others, especially those Special Ed students who have a learning disability, are ADD/ADHD, or even the shy, abused, neglected child, or even the so-called “smart” child who is normally bored in the classroom. If we do not meet the needs and learning styles of ALL students, through various teaching styles, we are not creating a differentiated classroom where 25 students could learn 25 different ways, even though they are all learning the same content.

    Reply
  8. Mike Hasley

    Not only a great observation, but nicely written (short and to the point!)

    Reply
  9. Emily Stone

    Very interesting. It’s refreshing to hear this new perspective. The molecular structure example in the article is the most poignant part for me. I know I am a visual learner, but there are some times where only a hands-on or “act it out” approach will help me retain information. Also interesting how the benefits of teachers simply being more conscious of different learning styles (and corresponding instructional styles) may be the key.

    Reply
  10. Gaurav Bhatnagar

    What about left-brain, right-brain, whole-brain and half-brain kind of learning. Anyone has any non-results on it?

    Reply

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. The Henricus » Multiple Intelligences or Strategic Teaching? - [...] reminded me of an interesting post at Punya Mishra’s website about matching teaching styles to learning styles.  This is [...]

Leave a Reply to Mary Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *