Learning styles.

janeray1940 said:

This is actually a pet topic of mine! As a kid I tested off the charts high on IQ tests and the like, yet I managed to fail classes and get mediocre grades all through school (until I finally dropped out, got my GED, and entered the workforce). When I returned to college at age 30, I got tested and learned that not only do I have a numbers disability (dyscalculia) but that I'm a visual-kinesthetic learner, which is among the minority and is pretty much the opposite learning style of how the American public school system is skewed (or perhaps was skewed, in my day - no idea what it's like now but I can only imagine it's even more cookie-cutter standardized). Auditory or verbal learning - listening to a lecture, reading instructions from a printed page - completely fails me. Eventually I learned to compensate by taking handwritten notes and drawing pictures during lectures. To this day, I have never read an instruction manual for any device I've owned - I just figure it out as I go along.

To relate this to uke: despite being visually oriented, I can't learn from uke videos at all - the reverse orientation of the image to my POV just melts my brain. For me, having an instructor has been key, both from being able to orient myself in the same direction as the instructor and being able to interact by asking questions. And playing by ear is probably the hardest thing for me - while I can hear melodies just fine (and even "see" them on the fretboard I picture in my mind as I listen or play!) hearing the different intervals that comprise a chord just stumps me if it's anything beyond major/minor/maybe a 7th. Aside from a few books of tab that I use for specific songs, I learned long ago to stop wasting my money on uke books - for me, the best way to learn is via in-person lessons, playing with others, or learning a specific song.

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actadh said:

I have my communication students do a learning style inventory, and then do one on a person they often interact with, and then compare styles. It can be quite eye opening.

Here is a quick one -
http://www.upb.pitt.edu/uploadedFiles/Learning%20Styles%20Inventory.pdf

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actadh said:

I have my communication students do a learning style inventory, and then do one on a person they often interact with, and then compare styles. It can be quite eye opening.

Here is a quick one -
http://www.upb.pitt.edu/uploadedFiles/Learning%20Styles%20Inventory.pdf

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Rllink said:

Thanks for posting that, and thanks for being the kind of teacher who recognizes that we all don't learn the same way. Maybe most teachers understand that now, I don't know, but back in the sixties, when I went to school, it was was not factored into the teaching. I'm going to hang on to that PDF.

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tbeltrans said:

I have long thought that the "bell curve" measured more about a given student's learning style matching the classroom teaching style than it did anything about the student's ability to learn. Also, when discussions about "talent" have come up here and in other forums, I have said over and over pretty much what the OP said. I am glad other people are recognizing this. I believe that EVERYBODY has abilities and that it is merely a matter of each finding his or her own "operating style" (i.e. how that person functions best for both learning and executing). Those that we look up to as being "talented" have found theirs, but never forget that we each can too.

Tony

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Benscience said:

Having been a teacher for the last 27 years of all age groups from 5 year olds to university lecturing, learning styles has often been touted as a remedy for students to identify with and for teachers to adapt their teaching to but there is very little evidence that it even exists at all
Learning style inventories make use of forced-response choices causing people to make the same choices. “Nearly everybody would prefer a demonstration in science class to an uninterrupted lecture. This doesn’t mean that such individuals have a visual style, but that good science teaching involves demonstrations.” (Stahl)
Some of the best known and widely used instruments have such serious weaknesses (e.g. low reliability, poor validity, and negligible impact on pedagogy) that we recommend that their use in research and practice be discontinued. (Coffield)
Recognition of individuals’ strengths and weaknesses is good practice; using this information, however, to categorize children and prescribe methods can be detrimental to low-performing students. Although the idea of reading style is superficially appealing, critical examination should cause educators to be skeptical of this current educational fad. (Snider)
It is nonsense to hold the idea that some of your students can be classified as visual learners, whereas others, within the same class are auditory learners. There is simply no known validity to making any such classifications on the basis of either neurology or genuine behavioural performance. (Hattie)
There is not adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning styles assessments into general education practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. (Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, & Bjork)
"VAK (Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic) is “’nonsense’ from a neuroscientific point of view. ‘Humans have evolved to build a picture of the world through our senses working in unison, exploiting the immense interconnectivity that exists in the brain….The rationale from employing VAK learning styles appears to be weak. After more than 30 years of educational research into learning styles there is no independent evidence that VAK, or indeed any other learning style inventory, has any direct educational benefits.” ~Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institute and a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University (Henry)
These are a few of the more recent analyses of learning styles. I offer this not as a response to just disagree but to offer something to consider.

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Benscience said:

“Nearly everybody would prefer a demonstration in science class to an uninterrupted lecture. This doesn’t mean that such individuals have a visual style, but that good science teaching involves demonstrations.” (Stahl)

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Rllink said:

Well, be that as it may, I am just thankful that I have had visionary educators in my life who were innovative and willing to move from the one size fits all model of teaching, and take an interest in me as an individual. If it weren't for those teachers and mentors, I doubt that I would be where I am now. As far as the validity of teaching to the different learning styles and research into it, I'm not an authority.

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