Articles on learning Styles

What Cathy moore thinks educators should do

we should build learners' metacognitive skills and use formative assessment: * we would likely get better results by helping learners structure their learning and gauge their progress, and by offering contextual feedback and any necessary reinforcement.

Why Does the Belief in Learning Styles Persevere? According to the authors

we think that a belief in learning styles persists because the more general claims (the ones we addressed above) are true. Learners do differ from one another many who believe in the myth do not consider the critical differences between styles and abilities. a belief in learning styles fits into an egalitarian view of education: Everyone has value, according to the theory, and everyone has strengths. Third, learning-styles theory has succeeded in becoming "common knowledge." --well-known cognitive phenomenon called the confirmation bias

According to the authors What Do Learning-Styles Theorists Get Wrong?

that learners have preferences about how to learn that are independent of both ability and content and have meaningful implications for their learning. Many students will report preferring to study visually and others auditory channel. However, when these tendencies are put to the test under controlled conditions, they make no difference—learning is equivalent whether students learn in the preferred mode or not.

That quote is from Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,

"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. If classification of students' learning styles has practical utility, it remains to be demonstrated." Learning styles argument

What certain dimensions do the authors believe affect learning

(ability, background knowledge, interest) emphasis on learning styles, we think, often comes at the cost of attention to these other important dimensions

Other learning studies

**The same research in cognitive science and education that has failed to find evidence for learning styles has offered many insights into how memory does work. **Mindset (2006) by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck is an excellent summary of the interesting ways that incentives—both carrots and sticks—as well as internal drives influence learning. ** Henry L. Roediger and his associates at Washington University in St. Louis have demonstrated the value of testing for learning. -- Even the act of taking a test when one does not know the answers can support learning the correct answers faster and more effectively.

Marzano (1998) reported on the largest meta-analysis of research on instruction ever undertaken and found that

*approaches which were directed at the metacognitive level of setting goals, choosing appropriate strategies and monitoring progress are more effective in improving knowledge outcomes than those which simply aim to engage learners at the level of presenting information for understanding and use." (p. 143)

what do you think is the difference between style and ability?

Ability is that you can do something. Style is how you do it.

Things they agree on with different Learning styles

1Learners are different from each other, these differences affect their performance, and teachers should take these differences into account. 2often intertwined with ability, students differ in their interests. If a student loves the piano, or basketball, or chess, or the biology of frogs, that student will no doubt learn material related to that subject faster than another one who does not share that fascination. 3students differ in their background knowledge, and that difference influences their learning 4some students have specific learning disabilities, and these affect their learning in specific ways

authors of Myths about learning styles

Cedar Riener & Daniel Willingham

Learning styles: Worth our time? 21 SEPTEMBER 2010 BY CATHY MOORE

Don't spend time on something that isn't proven: "We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base."

2nd this theorists get wrong according to the authors

Learning could be improved by matching the mode of instruction to the preferred learning style of the student

MY thoughts

Saying that yes people are different and learn different from their differen backgrounds and understanding and do not have different learning styles if ridiculas their reasoning that a student would stop attempting to learn because the professon started a narrative and turned of the power point - that would just be weak learner. Did you enjoy the power point more maybe, but most people understand that they have a perfered learning style that seems to assist their ablity to understand concepts, but does not make it impossible for them to learn with anyother style. -- Seems like their main point is to know interests of the student -- I would say how they like to learn is one of their interests.

good evidence for styles look like? Didn't look good.

That is, you would expect that verbalizers would be faster and more accurate when doing the all-words trials, and visualizers would be faster and more accurate when doing the all-pictures trials. But they weren't. -- enduring strategies that they use on different tasks, and that they can tell you something about these strategies.

Main critism about learning styles

There is no credible evidence that learning styles exist -- Students differ in their abilities, interests, and background knowledge, but not in their learning styles.

Daniel Willingham--Science & Education - on Learning Styles

Yes, different learning styles, but may be just different abilities. --some of the other style distinctions could be matters of ability

Study guide concludes that the Conditioning theory (based on B.F. Skinner's schools of behaviourism) . . . .

continues to have a profound effect on the design of training programs. Of particular note to trainers are the three connected concepts of shaping, chaining, and generalizing, whereby desired behaviours are developed and encouraged. It is useful to think about our own approach to training, and to see how much we rely (perhaps unconsciously) upon behaviourism.

most popular current conception of learning styles

equates style with the preferred bodily sense through which one receives information, whether it be visual, auditory, or kinesthetic

learning style is a theory of . . .

learning styles is not a theory of instruction. It is a theory of how the mind works

Why the authors believe College Educators should Care?

opportunity costs * If educations of focus their attention to learning styles, for which evidence has not been found, may lead educators to neglect research on learning for which there is solid scientific support.