The myth of the myth of learning styles
nedbatchelder.com
nedbatchelder.com
"Learning styles" usually refers to one of a handful of specific ways of dividing up people. E.g., as preferring visual, aural, reading/writing, or kinesthetic learning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Neil_Fleming's...
The body of the article acknowledges that those "learning styles" have been debunked:
> Briefly: the theory was that some people were inherently visual learners, while others were textual learners, among other kinds. This has been proven untrue.
The author is defending this idea instead:
> I’m talking about learners finding paths that work for them.
Fair enough, but recycling "learning styles" in the title is knowingly and needlessly confusing.
I don't think it's been studied in a long time because of the influence of the "Learning Styles is Bullshit" gang.
It hasn't been seriously studied since the late 90s (imho) because the people working on it were all fairly satisfied with the new tool they'd created for certain struggling teachers in very specific circumstances. From that perspective, potential research questions might boil down to "Is empathizing with a different point of view useful?" or "Exactly how attracted am I to the idea of archetypes?"
Seriously now, the way I see it, there is a common problem when a general descriptive observation—in this case that some learners subjectively prefer certain learning approaches to a greater or lesser degree—derives into an overly assertive model as to which types of "learning styles" exist, the assertion that each person must fit into each category, and prescriptive assertions as to how each "type" of person learns better. This is common in many other observations that are overly reified into people believing they must fit into a category and believe that identifying as part of it confers predictive power or expectations. This happens in the myriad of personality type models, attachment styles, and, to a lesser extent, even sexual orientations (see how often young people will ask questions online in the vein of “I am a h(eter|om)osexual g(uy|irl) but I am attracted to my (fe)?male friend. Can I still be $1sexual?”).
The legitimate observation of average differences and tendencies, as well as their descriptions, is overshadowed by going too prescriptive. And sometimes, when there is legitimate backlash against these overgeneralisations as happens in "learning styles", the pendulum goes to far the other way and society rejects the initial observation entirely. And yet, in certain circumstances, some people do prefer different ways of learning than others. They may even be correct that, in that given case, they learn better that way. Let's accept the messiness of human diversity without coming up with overly defined boxes.
Worse yet those identities changed in their root definition, so that if you were some identity 20y ago, that now means something different.
For example, if you were a 2nd wave feminist, you're likely assumed to hate transgender people.
To your point about "overly defined boxes," it's a little ironic how 10-15 years ago the prevailing thought in LGBT spaces was (more or less verbatim) "Society wants to fit us all into these rigid boxes, but I say fuck your boxes!" and now it's more like "Society wants to fit us all into rigid boxes, but there's actually a lot more boxes out there that you may not know about, so just keep looking until you find the right box. But you will find a box."
E.g., the extent to which nonbinary has almost become a defined third gender category with its own set of expectations rather than a catch-all for anyone who finds that the main two categories just don't quite cut it.
I'd say some dubious quality research (like most educational / psychology research is) was done to favour learning styles.
Then some newer, still dubious quality, research was done to "debunk" them.
Meanwhile, we probably don't know more about what objectively works in learning than we did before both sets of research were reported.
It's more about churning papers and taking sides in different academic camps, than actual scientific work.
Like with "Thinking, Fast and Slow" I wouldn't bet on either the original research or the debunking, having "settled" the issue.
The grand prize is any kind of gimmick that can be turned into staff development material and a lucrative publishing/consulting career.
Humans aren't like bowling balls dropped from towers, they're very non-deterministic, and the number of background factors that every individual has makes it very difficult to make federal statements.
Source: current ed research master's student.
* Most research is limited; most test memory of pictures vs words (pictures win for most). Most educators of higher levels believe that there is more to learning than memory, but this is largely not addressed by the researchers.
* Most "learning styles" are established via questionnaire, not actually testing how people learn best
* Even the "Learning Styles is BS" crowd is starting to weasel out of the implication of their conclusion that everybody learns the same. They are saying things like "talent" and "context" etc. give differences in how people learn, not learning styles. A distinction without a difference IMHO- with the possible exception that you could argue that you are, for example, verbal for math and visual for history or something (because of context or whatever).
* I don't have a dog in the fight. I only want what's best for students, which means to learn how they learn. If they are all the same, so be it (but I would be surprised).
* More of my thoughts here: https://studyswami.com/are-learning-styles-bs/ and my conceptual take on how we should measure learning styles if we really want to research them (don't take the actual results too seriously).is that what you mean?
Meme or not, I'll try to remember this for any conversation where I want to strengthen my argument :)
> Here's a quick response as I have to get to a sailboat race:
> You have no idea what you are talking about and the implications of using spaces for indentation are much more severe than you think.
It might work in combination with a software suite, with e-readers getting cheaper and more capable, and easily lasting through a school day, it's an option.
We can only seperate kids into groups when it serves adninistrative or industrial beenfits, when its for the benefit of the child, forget it.
I mean how can you expect a ridiculously expensive system where children spend the majority of their waking hours to actually ask a child if it suits them?
My only point is that I believe the situation has not been studied well, and it should be.
* why the sudden markdown/pre-wrap style change?
* why use ChatGPT when you can afford a sailboat race, better pay some social media person
* you do have a dog in some fight. Seems like you have stakes in some kind of e-learning platform
Also, needing five bullet points shows the weakness of your argument. Better do 5.
OK, sorry, that was spam. I see that you probably wrote that yourself and I don't have any stakes in this discussion.
I don't follow the broad research for the debate, but have a pretty good understanding of the way I learn now that I'm in my 30s.
I can't listen to lectures at all. Like I just fall asleep. I also have trouble staying awake in meetings where I have to sit still and listen to others talk without being able to engage much. College lectures were torture. It's really hard to grok certain engineering classes and listen when you're spending a ton of energy also taking notes and the professor is moving too fast. I have no idea why they don't just print them ahead of time and pass them out. Who cares if students then don't show up if they can learn the material better?
I've found out my best way to learn is to just read the textbook chapters on my own time (no lectures) and then do the homework answering questions or writing papers with the professor available to chat if we need anything (how my master's program works). That works best for me. Audio is just not a good medium for me. I prefer podcast transcripts instead of having to listen to the hosts talk which takes a lot longer. I'm sure others are different.
I have no idea what the difference was, but i've observed it.
Lectures seem more like a failure-mode that has somehow become the standard. Assume the students won’t read, and have a human take the book’s job. Humans are… not great books.
It is weird that video-lectures+in person discussion sections didn’t become the standard by, like, 2010 or so.
Seems we still do it because we have a love of tradition.
I'm very skeptical about the "there are no learning styles" results.
TBH, just staying at home and watching YouTube videos (on the same topics) is likely better than sitting in the average lecture, even if students don't want to read at all...
Good luck getting the students to watch the videos.
The lazy thing to do is sit down and have someone talk to you. So this doesn't happen in practice.
And what works best can even depend on the subject material for a single individual.
In my experience, the way people learn best is far more variable than a fixed set of learning styles.
And the way our education system works is usually a shotgun approach where they same material is taught in multiple ways and hope that one of them works. Which ends up wasting a lot of the students time with the approaches that don't work for them. And of course there will be students where none of the methods quite work for them.
Falling asleep doesn't mean you didn't learn from the lecture. I fall asleep during lectures and still learn a lot from them, I get sleepy when I learn stuff so falling asleep during learning is natural.
So don't conflate "I focused" with "I learned". You don't learn by focusing, you learn by rewiring your brain, and you rewire your brain best when you sleep.
I think people who got praised for working hard rather than for learning seek out activities where they work hard rather than activities where they learn, and conflates that for learning styles when it is just their own mental bias. Or people who prefer one style since it is more comfortable etc, people are really bad at evaluating how well they learned something.
I've got a strong hunch that learners have an overall learning modality: some prefer video, some prefer audio, some prefer long form text, and so on, but--there's also a local preference based on their current context: you might have a stronger preference to video for commuting or perhaps you like to print out materials and read it.
Finding ways to allow learners to come along their own journey that meets them where they are right now is key to generating better outcomes.
That said, I have wondered if my switch from being a great textual learner to someone unable to comprehend is due to lack of practice and my brain being lazy? I recently picked up a work of fiction from my kids' room and I was surprised at how hard it was for me to grok it (it was an old english book - Robinson Crusoe - so maybe it is the book and not me). I wish I was good at learning from all modalities again.
Also, I am definitely not the same person today that I was at 25. Perhaps I had a greater thirst for knowledge when I was younger…? At least the thirst was different than it is today. I also didn’t have three kids, and because of that fact I had a lot more spare time than I have today (:
Recently I've been reading William Gibsons sprawl trilogy and switching to that from things released in the past couple of years is jarring - the turns of phrase and general perspective is different.
What I find interesting is that if you persevere through the first few chapters you quickly adapt to the writers voice. Had a similar experience reading the wheel of time recently despite it being published comparatively recently
I think it made me burnt out of reading.
I think practice and keeping up with reading is part of it. But I think a larger part of it is now that I associate reading with time management and stress. The brain is active.
I've had this conversation with others that went to grad school. It's like the brain can't read or learn something without constant pressure and stress to understand everything about it.
My challenge now is simply committing. It takes an incredible amount of time to be competitive in a particular skill that I instead tend to generalize my skill set rather than specialize.
Since everyone pulls stuff out of their ass on this topic here's my take: write things down on paper that you want to remember. Memorization is a big part of learning and physically writing with a pen enhances memorization.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Bjork-2/publicat...
From the abstract: 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, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all.
Bad Education https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Education-Debunking-Myths/dp/0335...
The book is split into self-contained chapters, each of which debunk a (often, still) held myth about learning and education. 'Learning styles' is one of these, but others include setting and streaming classes by ability, the effects of 'good' schools. Each chapter is by a different author summarising academically (references) but accessibly a different 'debunk' topic.
UK-centric, but 'lessons' global. The main negative is the unescapable need for some of the chapter editors to air political grievances over the past, though these are mainly about sore wounds over party politics not pedagogy and easily identified. A take-away being shoddy science is used a lot to justify pre-held biases and 'common sense'.
There were a few that tried reading comprehension, etc, but often at an age of student where memory is not that different from comprehension in testing for it.
The other thing that I found was that nobody was testing for learning styles. They determined "Learning Styles" by giving questionnaire about preferences. It seems to me you need to at least develop a possible test for learning styles before you see if there are differences in learning. I may prefer to look at pictures, but I may actually learn more from text.
But I do side with Bjork in that teachers focusing on learning styles at this point is a distraction from things we know that help education. I just think more research needs to be done before we dismiss it.
I definitely learn better by seeing and reading than hearing things, I've never been able to pay attention in lectures or remember speech but I remember stuff written down. If "learning styles are debunked", what else is going on?
I'm sure people don't cleanly fit into one category (e.g. I may learn fine kinethetically as well, and I'm sure some people learn just as well visually as they do auditorally). Maybe everyone is actually a visual/kinethetic learner and teaching via speech just sucks.
But psychology is a soft science, and "learning styles are debunked" seems too broad considering many people indeed seem to learn better one way than the other.
I had a really intuitive grasp of mechanics and dynamics and free body diagrams, others were much better than me at electrical engineering concepts, others again strong in fluid dynamics etc.
There’s definitely some variation in the things people are naturally able to grasp based on their past.
So initial exposure to a new topic for the same group of people, naturally some will take to it more easily than others.
I wouldn’t say it was a cut and dry as “learning styles” but some combination of the material and the way it is presented by the professor makes it digestible to varying degrees by students.
I certainly see some truth in their argument. If you and I were each to read a text of something that, say, you are familiar with and I am not, then you would probably score higher in the "verbal" learning category and I would have to draw pictures to understand the text. But a big part of the difference is that I would have to learn a lot more than you in order to parse the text- you have a better background. This is easily seen in reading research papers for example, with a novice vs an expert.
My argument is that we simply haven't studied it enough to know if there are fundamental differences in the way people learn.
I think the more substantive critique here is that when people hear “learning styles” they stop thinking and just reject the idea reflexively. To be fair, this is a reasonable defense to a scam that persuaded a lot of people historically and still has a fair bit of traction.
A practical response would be to work around the wordings that have baggage, not because you have to for Big Brotherish reason, but because you have empathy for the people you’re speaking to.
"Learning Styles" thinking was based on the idea that step one was the most important. However, without conceptual understanding, learning devolves to rote learning. Without practice and repetition, long-term in-depth learning is impossible.
As far as approaches to learning, by far the best methods involve a fair amount of one-on-one attention. The quickest way to learn something is to have it directly explained to you by another person, with questions allowed. Similarly, the best way to test your own understanding of a subject is to explain it to someone else.
Of course, these are the most expensive methods of education, because they require a large investment in people - skilled teachers and other staff, and parking kids in front of Youtube videos is a lot less expensive (see also computer-automated grading of homework assignments and projects). Note that societies that don't place a high value on education are doomed to stagnation at best.
P.S. 'Learning styles' can be very important with dyslexia or dyscalculia, e.g. listening to an audiobook while reading along in a text can help the former, as does allowing calculators for the latter for the same reason. Students without these issues can adapt to different presentation styles without much difficulty, and if their school is any good they'll have access to all kinds of supplemental resources (libraries, tutors, access to online databases etc.).
P.P.S "Self-taught" is possible, but realistically it takes much more time and effort. Keep in mind though that an incompetent teacher is worse than no teacher at all.
This is something that hampered my progress in music and learning instruments until I understood it. Just learning an instrument without looking at theory behind it wasn't really motivating to me after a while. On the other hand, learning theory without having an instrument to use it on doesn't really click. However, putting these two together and in parallel results in a much more motivating and whole situation for me. Suddenly it's very interesting to understand what a song does at a deeper level, and a desire to be good enough with the guitar to do that, or similar things.
> As far as approaches to learning, by far the best methods involve a fair amount of one-on-one attention. The quickest way to learn something is to have it directly explained to you by another person, with questions allowed. Similarly, the best way to test your own understanding of a subject is to explain it to someone else.
I'm pretty happy how Spectre Academy does it. The main bulk is a bunch of video lectures and they have a discord server for course owners to ask questions to the lecturers as necessary. Though, as the article said, you need to treat these video lectures as... lectures. Get out that notebook and start writing down the important parts.
The most important thing in learning is to actively engage one's Imagination in various ways. Algebraic/Geometric mappings, Multi-level abstractions, Shifting between Abstraction and Concrete Reality, Relationship networks etc. are all needed.
This is a problem because there is real scientific evidence showing that people do not have specific learning styles.
The ideas that the author proposes center around "do you want to" and "do you like". Don't you get people telling you that they prefer "kinesthetic learning" because they "like it" better? How does this differ?
The conversation needs to focus around *what methods are effective for learning* and *what makes them effective*. The rest is fluff, getting ready to be debunked next.
I disagree with the comments about "metacognition"... I agree that is critical, but I don't see any sign that this article is addressing that. Metacognition means thinking about what worked and what did not work while you were/are trying to learn. The only sign of that in this article is the one sentence, "Understand what works for you," that refers to choosing one of the wants or likes from the list.
Do you mean aside from this?
People who downplay personality, social psychologists, will point to numerous studies where behavior is determined by social forces or external circumstances alone. There’s not a lot of experimental evidence that people differ from one another, despite our entire legal/ethical system holding that as a fundamental truth. From an empirical perspective is looks like determinism is, if not in the lead, having a good run at the moment.
What, how is mbti a personality but big five isn't?
For ex, if you really like deep diving into theory, you can do that for 2 weeks, then maybe a week of practical coding. And vice versa. I feel in this way, you learn at different focal lengths (when you point the lens of your mind at the task at hand), and that helps build a more thorough learning rather than choosing your favorite focal length and staying there.
But yes, you got the point of the post: there are many fine ways to learn, and you have to choose the best one for you.
To be more specific, I feel like there’s a strong correlation between a specific type of subject and a modality that fits- even if there’s no correlation between success and someone self selecting a given modality.
That feels like one of the main tasks of a good teacher. I feel that coding videos can be extremely useful for certain things. Like when introducing a new syntax it’s helpful to use the video format to point out structures and placement of syntax in real time (type definition goes here, you can also define a function like this, etc.)
To go back to the OP, a huge huge skill of learning is successful intuiting those modalities yourself. “I think a video would help me here”; “Here I can just read the docs to understand”
I'll see an interesting educational video on YouTube but i'll wait until I'm eating to play it or else I'll have a feeling of wasting my time.
Or in class if I have my computer in front on me i'll go check stuff on my server or do some web searches even if I really like the topic of the class.
I don't know if I'm missing motivation or discipline or both. I really enjoy talking and reading about the aformentioned topics, but I can't devote 100% of my attention to lectures/videos, or maybe only in 15-30 mins incréments.
i am running into these too. i think it is mainly discipline and difficulty to focus, wandering thoughts. i don't think it has anything to do with wanting to multitask. i don't want to multitask (except for the eat/tv thing) but i get distracted by thoughts and those are what make me do a web search or check something else.
My comment came out quite black and white, the reality is of course very nuanced. I personally have hard time focusing. Even if I find the topic interesting I'm constantly switching attention, unless there is a strong immersion, like with development work.
My point was just that the "life hacks" of learning are quite useless if you are not interested or disciplined in the first place, and if you are... you unlikely need them. At least my personal experience is that when the topic is interesting and I have motivation, I usually "find a way" to learn more.
That is verifiably false, people learn by watching all the time. You can argue that doing is the best way to learn, but it definitely isn't the only way to learn.
My point being that many people stop at watching/reading/discussing and don’t actually go in and do the thing they want learn. They’ll never really learn it until they can do it.
What is know-how if not knowing how to do something? I've learned how to do stuff from watching and then at a later point doing the thing proving that I had know-how. I knew how to do it before doing it.
Edit: Example from when I was a kid: I played a game and struggled with a particular kind of monster, always took damage from it. Me doing it a lot of time didn't lead to knowing how to beat it. Then I watched my brother play it once, after that I never took damage from that monster again. Me watching lead to know-how instantly, doing didn't help, watching helped.
You had know-how of the game. You were shown the key and were able to execute because you’ve attempted it a bunch of times and failed.
Someone given all the details on the game and the fight would likely fail to execute if they lacked know-how.
Article: myth -> strawman (learning styles are debunked replaced with (in my words) learning strategies are debunked) -> strawman “debunked”
Tell my wife how to do something, she's going to do poorly. Have her watch it, she'll get it much, much better.