March 16 and Dr. Smith Blooms

Penguines debating learning styles

It is that time of year again when flowers bloom and birds begin chirping. Yes it is spring. Also after March 15 some faculty members begin their chirping secure in their hard earned saftey blanket of tenure. Today we had our very own Dr. Smith who is tenured began his chirping via email. I am copying and pasting his chirping below:

Colleagues,

Recently an article was written in the Psychology Teacher Network newletter for which I subscribe (actually my wife subscribes, but I steal her copies). I thought it was relevant enough to share with all of you.

The article examines the evidence for and against learning styles and the consequences of these beliefs.

To quote the article:
"Learning styles do not exist."

"Differences in natural ability, background knowledge, and intrinsic interest and motivation all have important implications for learning."
The author goes on to discuss that abilities may be defined by domains (a musical ability or intelligence), but that these are not styles. "... someone with high musical ability is not able to use that higher musical ability to learn geography; a skilled dancer would not be able to translate their superior grace to superior vocabulary or biology test scores."

"Presenting content in different modes helps. Why? Novelty and change help maintain attention. Switching from a movie, to a story, to an activity that involves getting up and moving around helps all students learn."
So instead of presenting information in multiple modes to catch the different types of "learners" in the classroom, we can present the information in multiple modes to catch all learners and keep them all interested.

The article even discusses how learning styles have negative consequences.

Students that believe that they are "visual learners" may not pay attention as much to material presented using other modes.
Also, "if teachers are evaluated by how they differentiate instruction for each student, this can be needlessly overwhelming on the teachers' time and effort."

I sincerely hope that we use research like this to appropriately guide our students and the way that we are teaching them.

Here is a link to the Psych Teacher Network article:
http://www.apa.org/massmailing/EDSDEV/EDUCATION/PTNwinter1011.pdf
I have attached the scholarly review article that provides most of the evidence that is referred to in the above newsletter.