New evidence is sparking debate about teaching: Do we need to accommodate learning styles, and should we introduce math to toddlers? First, let's talk about the sacred cow we know as learning styles: The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses controversial new research - anyone who has studied to be an educator has probably been told they should match teaching techniques to student styles. "For example, kinesthetic learners - students who learn best through hands-on activities - are said to do better in classes that feature plenty of experiments, while verbal learners are said to do worse. Now four psychologists argue that... [t]here is no strong scientific evidence to support the 'matching' idea.... And there is absolutely no reason for professors to adopt it in the classroom.
"'We were startled to find that there is so much research published on learning styles, but that so little of the research used experimental designs that had the potential to provide decisive evidence,' says Harold E. Pashler, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego.... 'Lots of people are selling tests and programs for customizing education that completely lack the kind of experimental evidence that you would expect for a drug,' Pashler says. 'Now maybe the FDA model isn't always appropriate for education — but that's a conversation we need to have.'"
"Advocates of learning styles respond that Mr. Pashler is the one who lacks evidence. Robert J. Sternberg, dean of arts and sciences at Tufts University and a psychologist who has done a lot of work on learning styles, says in an e-mail message to The Chronicle that the
researchers did not fully survey the scholarly literature, and thus 'come across looking either biased about or largely ignorant of the field.'" Okay, so they didn't include a comprehensive literature survey - but where are the rebuttals to their specific findings, such as those charted above?
My two cents. I always figured it was unrealistic to expect busy educators to routinely tailor lesson plans to individual student styles -- I've done my share of teaching, and it seems the best thing is to employ a variety of methods, to cover the range of learning styles and hopefully keep the students more engaged. As Brain Rules puts it, we don't pay attention to things that are boring.
Show me the evidence. Kudos to David Glenn at the Chronicle of Higher Education for identifying not only the source of the published research paper (Psychological Science in the Public Interest), and its name (Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence [pdf]), but for also linking to it. The research abstract says "For more than three decades, the idea that instructional methods should match a student’s particular learning style has been a powerful influence in education.... In a new assessment of the available evidence, authors Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork conclude that the learning-styles hypothesis has little, if any, empirical grounding. A large number of studies have purported to show that different kinds of learners (such as 'auditory learners' and 'visual learners') learn best when taught in their preferred modality; but the majority of such studies have not used the type of randomized research designs (e.g., classify learners into categories, then randomly assign the learners to use one of several different learning methods and assess effectiveness of the learning methods with a test given to all participants) that would make their findings credible. What psychological evidence does show is that people are inclined to hold false beliefs about how they learn and that they tend to learn and teach others in nonoptimal ways. Among other things, the report has significant implications for instructional approaches, and underscores the need to ensure that teaching methods are informed by sound scientific research, not fad educational theories or intuition."
Math for four-year-olds? A recent New York Times story talks about educators who are questioning conventional ideas about teaching math: Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them says educators and scientists "have believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.But recent research has turned that assumption on its head - that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class. The findings, mostly from a branch of research called cognitive neuroscience, are helping to clarify when young brains are best able to grasp fundamental concepts."
Great information. But true to NYT tradition, the article doesn't tell us where to look if we want to see the evidence for ourselves. For example, it says "In one recent study, for instance, researchers found that most entering preschoolers could perform rudimentary division, by distributing candies among two or three play animals." (Which study?) And "This relationship is new and still awkward, experts say, and there is more hyperbole than evidence surrounding many 'brain-based' commercial products on the market. But there are others, like an early math program taught in Buffalo schools, that have a track record." Can we get the name of those experts? The article does quote some educators, but doesn't link them specifically to this statement.
