Research at the moment is somewhat sceptical about whether teaching according to learning styles is effective. Learning styles feel intuitively sensible – as teachers, we feel that students exhibit different preferences for how material should be presented, and introspectively, we often feel that we ourselves like content present in particular ways (I like pictures!). The Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic framework seems to place this on a more solid analytical foundation, consistent with the separation of different sensory systems in the brain. More convincing still is that when people express preferences about their learning style (based on questionnaires), they seem to do so reasonably consistently.
But the acid test here is whether students presented material consistent with their preferred learning style out-perform students who are given the material in a non-preferred format, in learning and understanding that material. Here, the evidence from properly carried out experiments suggests no such advantage. You can find a recent short article by Doug Rohrer and Harold Pashler nicely summarising this work here: http://uweb.cas.usf.edu/~drohrer/pdfs/Rohrer&Pashler2012MedEd.pdf. If you’ve got a lot of time to spend reading, here’s a more systematic review of all the different learning style theories, the evidence supporting them, and their impact on pedagogy: http://sxills.nl/lerenlerennu/bronnen/Learning%20styles%20by%20Coffield%20e.a..pdf
So learning styles may be something we invent about ourselves, which actually bear little correspondence to how our brains process information.
However, I still quite like the idea of learning styles. Psychologists are pretty confident that there are individual differences between children in their abilities. Shouldn’t this feed through to teaching methods? For example, much of the thrust of recent work on the genetics of education suggests that societies should embrace genetic differences in children’s abilities, and tailor educational curricula to allow maximisation of children’s different genetic potential. This is one of the main conclusions of Kathryn Asbury and Robert Plomin’s recent book ‘G is for Genes’. If this approach is right, shouldn’t we be using different teaching methods to maximise different children’s potential?
Perhaps what is lacking at the moment is our ability to work out how to translate observed differences in children’s abilities or expressed learning preferences into individualised teaching methods. Perhaps VAK was just too naive about how straightforward this translation would be. Rohrer and Pashler conclude: “there is presently no empirical justification for tailoring instruction to students’ supposedly different learning styles. Educators should instead focus on developing the most effective and coherent ways to present particular bodies of content, which often involve combining different forms of instruction, such as diagrams and words, in mutually reinforcing ways”.
There is really no evidence to support VAK(one VAK website even suggests you can detect a child’s learning still by whether he looks straight ahead or down when trying to solve a problem or says ‘I see’ versus ‘I get it.’! The Royal Society report on education dismisses VAK as a neuromyth. I would see itv worsens snake oil, presumably originating from once widely believed but now discredited ideas about left versus right brain differences
This is a really useful and balanced blog on learning styles, I think. There’s also some video content at the top of the page (in case you’re a visual learner, natch!)
Of course I like the fact that as a teacher planning lessons, I can justify NOT thinking up VAK approaches – often in a forced or vacuous way – and concentrate on the content (you know, the stuff we’re supposed to be passionate about, as well as everything else … ), but there’s a more serious modification – how are we to convince the teaching industry that ALL of their assumptions must be subject to the same rational scrutiny? This website is a good start (thanks to the Wellcome Trust) but it is a small step. Can’t see the teaching unions helping much (see the comment on the ATL initiative above) and politicians? forgive my scepticism. Seriously, where’s the best place to apply more effort?
Comments
Lia - WellcomeTrust commented on :
http://sxills.nl/lerenlerennu/bronnen/Learning%20styles%20by%20Coffield%20e.a..pdf – copy the whole link to access the second article.
Steven Rose commented on :
There is really no evidence to support VAK(one VAK website even suggests you can detect a child’s learning still by whether he looks straight ahead or down when trying to solve a problem or says ‘I see’ versus ‘I get it.’! The Royal Society report on education dismisses VAK as a neuromyth. I would see itv worsens snake oil, presumably originating from once widely believed but now discredited ideas about left versus right brain differences
Sue commented on :
This is a really useful and balanced blog on learning styles, I think. There’s also some video content at the top of the page (in case you’re a visual learner, natch!)
http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html
arvwd commented on :
Of course I like the fact that as a teacher planning lessons, I can justify NOT thinking up VAK approaches – often in a forced or vacuous way – and concentrate on the content (you know, the stuff we’re supposed to be passionate about, as well as everything else … ), but there’s a more serious modification – how are we to convince the teaching industry that ALL of their assumptions must be subject to the same rational scrutiny? This website is a good start (thanks to the Wellcome Trust) but it is a small step. Can’t see the teaching unions helping much (see the comment on the ATL initiative above) and politicians? forgive my scepticism. Seriously, where’s the best place to apply more effort?