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Comment by wisemang | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate the succinct detail they go into regarding how the concept of “learning styles” has been debunked. I’ve always considered myself more of a visual learner, and seeing posts here and elsewhere about this supposedly not being a thing has never sat well with me (though I never delved into the actual research).

Turns out I do in fact agree with this explanation; that it’s more about what’s being taught that should dictate the how:

> While learners have preferred styles, effective instruction matches the content, not learning styles. A science class should use graphs to present data rather than verbal descriptions, regardless of visual or auditory learning styles, just like cooking classes should use hands-on practices rather than reading, whether learners prefer a kinesthetic style or not.

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> I’ve always considered myself more of a visual learner, and seeing posts here and elsewhere about this supposedly not being a thing has never sat well with me (though I never delved into the actual research).

My understanding of the research is that your preference for visual learning is real. But your preference doesn't actually translate into better learning outcomes. Ie, you might prefer visual stimulus but the research suggests you'll still learn content just as fast if its presented in other mediums.

I doubt the research accounts for Neurodivergent folks, assuming it even correctly represents Neurotypical.

As with many of these studies, they're treated as fact despite it being clear that it does not address the real-world problems.

Do I actually learn better visually ? No idea, but it's also clear that I don't learn in the same way as the majority of people in the classes I attended, and failed many exams despite being able to achieve the same outcomes.

I think the definition of 'learning' needs to be considered. It is measured by an exam, or is it a true understanding of the subject taught, as these are often two very different outcomes.

> I doubt the research accounts for Neurodivergent folks, assuming it even correctly represents Neurotypical.

I'm curious about this, do we have more recent studies about neurodivergence/neurotypical? I'd be curious how many people are neurodivergent (to significant degrees).

It’s trivial. Define it operationally as a collection of conditions (autism + adhd + depression) and plot the trend. Ask an LLM if you can’t do it yourself. You’ll find the definition you choose matters a lot but autism has increased and it’s worth researching that if you never have before!

Exams not being a good measure has nothing to do with learning styles.

I do not see how it would not? Appears to me that responding to exams is at once an expression and practice of the learning. It’s not as if a test situation is isolated from the overall learning process.

If a learner is not oriented towards written or read communication, their exam results may not reflect a written test. If a learner has problems with their practical skills being observed in action, a practical test may not reflect their actual skills or understanding.

> If a learner is not oriented towards written or read communication, their exam results may not reflect a written test

Being unable to communicate what you have learned is a serious disorder and not a learning style issue. Learning styles are about how you learn, not how you demonstrate what you learned.

But yes, people who are unable to write or read or very bad at writing have problems and tend to get extra support on written exams to make it fair for them, as the exam should test their knowledge and not their ability to write. For example they don't give blind people a zero just because they failed to read the exam.

Please see social constructivist or cognitivist learning theory.

Learning and expression of what is learned are part of the same learning process and it is entirely artificial to separate one of them to be part of learning style, and the other as not being part of it.

Virtually all learning is also learning how to express the subject being learnt.

> Being unable to communicate what you have learned is a serious disorder and not a learning style issue.

It's absolutely a learning style issue if those teaching are not able to pick up on the issues with learning if the person being taught is unable to effectively communicate how they are struggling.

I spent years trying to explain to teachers why I did not understand some of the concepts they were telling me, and they would often tell me to just 'accept it' and move on. Bad teachers perhaps, but that's all part of the learning and others seemed to be fine... so that is a learning 'style'.

Your suggestion of 'serious disorder' is also misplaced.

What does neurotypical mean?

"Neurotypical" means "not neurodivergent". In the colloquial usage, a "neurodivergent" person is someone who is autistic or has ADD/ADHD. More generally, it means someone's cognition and behavior differ from the average to a clinically or socially significant degree, which could include e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar, etc. as well as autism or ADD/ADHD.

I've heard the term before but not researched the thinking behind it. From Google/Wikipedia I'm getting a confused picture and one I'm not sure I like. According to wikipedia the word has its origins in the idea of "neurodiversity", which it describes in these terms:

> Neurodiversity is a framework for understanding human brain function and mental illness. It argues that diversity in human cognition is normal and that some conditions classified as mental disorders are differences and disabilities that are not necessarily pathological.

I absolutely agree with all of that, but the word "neurotypical" seems to suggest that there is a large, probably majority group that can all be lumped together and tagged with a single label, separate from those who are "neurodivergent". I don't think I'm comfortable with that at all.

Given I've been diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome, I am presumably considered "neurodivergent" in this world view. However I don't think there is some "normal" that I deviate from. Everyone I know has an entirely unique mind, and despite the diagnosis I don't see mine as deviating in a way that puts me in a group distinct from the mainstream. I know people who think in ways that are arguably more idiosyncratic than mine, but who haven't been diagnosed with anything and would presumably be judged "neurotypical".

Neurodiversity sounds like a great idea from what little I've just read: stop stigmatising particular "syndromes" and acknowledge the uniqueness and variation present in all human minds. But dividing the world into "neurotypical" and "neurodivergent" people seems like the exact opposite of that. Am I missing something?

It's absolutely a spectrum, just like the individual conditions that make it up are spectra. (Everything is spectra. Is my friend who has arthritis in his otherwise working legs "physically disabled"? It depends on whether he's walking around a store or trying to run a marathon.)

"Neurotypical" here, when used as a binary adjective, means something like "close enough to the average on all the relevant spectra to not particularly benefit from special consideration". The exact line for where that is is going to be blurry and situationally dependent, because it's a shorthand for an approximation.

My usage is generally towards those who refuse to accept that the spectrum largely exists, and you are either 'normal' or 'disabled'.

You'd think there were not that many folk, but unfortunately there are, especially within the older generation and many driven people who believe you're just not 'trying hard enough' or 'making excuses'.

The irony being that many of them are also likely further on the spectrum than average.

It's more about the attitude and approach to life, than the individuals. Many expectations are towards being 'Neurotypical' and do not cater for, or even acknowledge the challenges, of Neurodiversity.

> but the word "neurotypical" seems to suggest that there is a large, probably majority group that can all be lumped together and tagged with a single label, separate from those who are "neurodivergent". I don't think I'm comfortable with that at all.

I personally speculate that the vast majority of the population does have some form of cognitive diversity, it's just that most of it is undiagnosed (with little opportunity or no incentive or too low-intensity to get a formal diagnosis), not formally known to science for diagnosis, or not currently considered an illness/disability.

> Am I missing something?

Neurotypical has its origins in social media, as a (slightly) derogatory term for the group it describes.

> Am I missing something?

Nope, you've nailed it. Can't let those damn sex-having neurotyps in marketing get the leg up on us!

AFAIK, that, and also there is no clustering anywhere, so it makes no sense to talk about the styles as if they were a fixed set.

But every thing I've read sustains that the real conclusion from the styles holds: that you learn best if you are exposed to several of them.

> But your preference doesn't actually translate into better learning outcomes. Ie, you might prefer visual stimulus but the research suggests you'll still learn content just as fast if its presented in other mediums.

These two are not actually the same, despite the "i.e." connecting them. I'm sure you know that -- just pointing itnout because it's a common sleight of hand when referencing science.

"Failed to show an improvement in learning speed" does not mean "successfully showed an equality in learning speed". The latter is very hard to prove, and is probably the null hypothesis -- we just assume it to be true without evidence to the contrary.

Is that for the people that didn't drop out or are the drop outs included in the stats?

Afaik those were short term experiments - people don't drop out that quickly.

That seems like a pretty useless study if it's not covering the full effects of learning styles that cater to an individual's preferences.

I don't see how you can divorce this from motivation. If I much prefer listening to content instead of reading about it, I'm going to be more motivated to learn the subject matter, which results in me learning more overall.

You will never learn how to cook by listening to it. You will never learn to ski by listening to instructions about it. You will never learn 3d graphics programming by listening to podcast courses.

You will learn a lot about Roman history by listening to it. You will learn a lot about the Spanish language by listening to it.

If you avoid learning things that you can't learn by listening, then you will only ever learn things that can be learned by listening and that will bias your perspective about learning anything.

That's not the point I'm making. The point is that people do have "learning preferences" and these have an ultimate effect on learning.

To use your example: some people prefer listening to Roman history podcasts. Others would rather watch a film. Still others prefer a book. If you want to maximize learning, it seems best to pick the style/format most suited to your preferences.

> If you want to maximize learning, it seems best to pick the style/format most suited to your preferences.

Yes, but iff that format is well-suited to the subject matter.

Typically the researchers pay the subjects.

It's a very active area of research though, and many reward schemes have been used and studied.

Derek goes into some of the research here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA

Courses teaching music theory through visual depictions, take note!

This is why I failed music class in high-school. I was the only non-band student so the work was accelerated.

This is why trying to rank/judge/grade everyone by a uniform standard is almost universally terrible.

Students should be encouraged to try their best in every subject, allowed to make the mistakes they are naturally going to make at whatever level they are currently, and helped to improve over time. Punishing people for being less prepared than peers who did more practice or for making ordinary and expected mistakes actively gets in the way of their learning, as well as making them feel terrible. It's pretty bad for the students who are more prepared as well, as many of them internalize the idea that they are inherently good at some things and inherently bad at others, which is sometimes temporarily gratifying but often stops them from pushing themselves to try anything new or hard.

The problem here was too little testing, not too much. If they tested the students on music before they started they would have been put in classes where they belong and they could have gotten the teaching they needed.

Having some pressure to learn things is essential. I discovered that if I audited a course, I never learned much. I needed the pressure of grades.

I agree and disagree. I agree in that pressure is good, I disagree that audits are bad because of no pressure. Audits mean that is low priority which means that it will fall off when your busy schedule of "actual" courses have deadlines. Which is not a refletion of your ability nor interest to learn but of your workload.

This is the main reason I hold resentment towards GE's. Not because I don't want to be a well rounded person, but because when 3-4 other major classes are already crushing you the last bit of "pressure" needed is some random music theory or history course quizzing you. I never really got the time to breathe in college, and taking my time woulda been a $20k+ decision on top of the $80k I already had in debt. I literally could not afford to learn properly.

Moreover, the hope is that GEs would mean more well rounded students, liberal thinkers. There is little proof of that outcome being achieved. I wouldn’t want to scrap them though, out of fear of what less well rounded graduates might act like.

> I wouldn’t want to scrap them though, out of fear of what less well rounded graduates might act like.

They would act like Europeans and the rest of the world where GE's aren't a thing. What that means depends on your biases, but it doesn't seem too bad to me. And since silicon valley is mostly foreign software engineers today it doesn't seem like a bad thing for their performance either.

You're right about that, I took an economics class which turned out to be a Marxist indoctrination course. I wasn't interested in wasting time on fairy tales. I then satisfied the GE requirement by taking classes like financial accounting, which I expected to be useful in my career.

External pressure can work in the short term, but it disincentivises taking risk (which is where life-long learning happens), it steps on internal motivation (which is where life-long learning happens), and once the external pressure is removed, the interest in learning drops to further below where it was before the pressure was introduced.

So yes, it works in the short term, but I believe it's a net negative overall.

Grades are great, but not for the pressure they apply on students -- they are a measure of how successful the teacher has been in reaching their students!

> Grades are great, but not for the pressure they apply on students -- they are a measure of how successful the teacher has been in reaching their students!

The students do have some responsibility to learn the material.

> This is why trying to rank/judge/grade everyone by a uniform standard is almost universally terrible.

The point of grades on a universal standard ought not to have anything to do with the students; it should serve as a diagnostic metric for the teacher.

And it can be far more coursely grained than it often is today. In fact, most teachers don't need a finer signal than number of passing and failing students to figure out how well they are doing.

Much like I use the uptime percentage as a signal for which code needs bugfixes and how bold I can be when introducing new features, the teacher can use the fraction passing to determine what needs to be taught differently and how quickly to introduce new material. Of course, schools don't work in a way that makes teacher-led learning possible...

I often end up in this concept of the "real world" when talking about kids and their up-bringing. Iv'e always felt school needs to be much more individually tailored, and this connects to my real-world thinking about kids: I envision how the world "outside" of the family will treat my kids, and what they need to do well out there. Same thing applies to school, really. And in the real world we do not expect everyone to know the same things, do the same job, or have the same personality or talent as everyone else. So why should schools be like this? Its just stupid.

A bad mark is not a punishment, just an evaluation of your learning level.

Or an evaluation of the teacher. In my experience, a great teacher produces better students.

It's usually the teacher who creates the exam. I've seen plenty of bad teachers give extremely easy exams where everyone gets awesome grades even though no one understood anything. Standardized exams are few and far between.

and can lead to a punishment of repeating a class or entire grade.

I do agree that there is plenty of destructive stigma associated with repeating a class or grade, but there is no alternative, assuming your grades reflect your actual learning level (which tends to be the case for the low grades, in my experience, even if it doesn't for higher grades). You can't move on to a higher grade if you just didn't learn the basics, you'll be even worse off. What possible point would there be in trying to teach comparative literature to someone who didn't learn to read or write properly?

So, we need to get rid of the stigma, not the practice.

I agree with the sentiment. But I feel the sentiment is comparable to saying we need to rid society of violence. Maybe at a university level we can apply this, but we 1000% need to bring down the cost of tuition before considering spending more money at college.

for grade school, I'm at an impasse. I don't like complaining without offering something actionable, but the scale and existing inequalities of schools is so dire that I don't know where to start. The realistic answer over the decades has been to simply lower the bar overtime, but that doesn't exactly help either.

You are telling me that giving them more education is punishment? No matter how you do it they get left behind, if they continue to get put in classes they aren't ready for that is bad as well.

Students who repeat the class don't tend to learn more second time around. And it is massive punishment due to social consequences with peers.

Whatever did not worked first time around, does not work second time around and plus they are more demotivated.

Let me guess, sample size of n=1?

There are many reasons why students don't learn everything they can from a class and inability to grasp the material is only one one of them, yet it is the only reason that ensures they won't learn more the second time around.

it is massive punishment due to social consequences with peers.

Get better peers? What you're saying is that it's better for students to keep failing so as not to upset their milieu. Oftentimes, the best thing you can do for a struggling child is to take them out of the environment that's holding them down.

> Let me guess, sample size of n=1?

No, that one is actually systematic result. That was original reason why they stopped doing it. It did not helped anything. Special help, additional tutors who are actually trained in behavioral and learning issues, those sometimes help. Keeping them back a grade, not much.

> Get better peers?

This real world we live in does not provide better peers. Peers are other kids, those are how they are.

> What you're saying is that it's better for students to keep failing so as not to upset their milieu.

What I am saying is that when they are hold a grade, the system is keeping them failing. They dont get better. It does not magically turns then into better performing students. They will just suck in a way similar to original suck, except that it also leads to them trying even less then before.

More time absolutely helps, people do much better the second time they take a class. Teachers are a good example, they typically didn't get good grades, but after having seen the class over and over so many times they get good enough to teach it. It works, repetition leads to mastery.

It is just that practically it did not happened with elementary school students. Special help class with more repetition and teacher trained in learning issues do help.

Also, the issues of failing students are not easily fixable with repetition. They have often attention issues, learning disabilities, behavioral issues, mental health issues etc. that are not helped by repetition at all.

Where I am, those kids with deeper issues preventing them to learn as quick as others often have to repeat a class, fail again and then get send to special schools. In theory they should get more appropriate help there, but normally there is not more funding in these special schools and it's even harder because all of the pupils have bigger learning deficiencies. So often these kids are left behind.

The only solution that gives every kid an equal opportunity would mean a massive increase of funding of schools and teachers. But even if that would happen, we currently do not have enough well educated teachers and the job is also not very popular due to high stress and low pay and new teachers take many years to be available...

with the way our education structure is setup, yes. you fall behind your peers, you are assumed to be dumb or even unteachable, if you're a rising senior, a bad grade (be it sue to external or internal factors) can rescind future prospect.s And after a certain point you have to be kicked out of a school for legal reasons so now you need to work around some other way to earn a GED.

If we're talking college, you now need to either spend more time and especially money to repeat a course, or drop out and give up entirely. it can also disqualify you from scholarships and grants, so it is a direct financial consequence in two ways. Unlike the workforce, you are not given adequate opportunity in academia to fall behind, let alone fail.

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I agree in theory that there should be no shame in needing to redo classes and reinforce your learnings, but current societal expectations in traditinal education does no support such a mindset. Another reason I wish there was more awareness and accessibilities in paths outside of grade school -> university to figure out what you enjoy and how to learn it.

How do you decide who gets to study a subject full time at a famous institution?

Same way we do now: based on who's parents can donate a new wing for the campus to build.

But sure, it's the same problem with any other prestigious venue. Demand far far far outstrips supply. So they don't really need to pick "the best" students. Merely students "over the bar of quality". There's no problem in the eyes of the venue, so there's nothing to change.

I think the implied assumption in this question is flawed to begin with in that not everyone needs to be at a famous institution to succeed. But if you want my likely bad take: sports coaches actually have a pretty decent method of scouting by... well, scouting. seek out local/state/national talent and nurture them years before an app goes in. If they can build a relationship, that's a personal referral that goes farther than any essay prompt.

It's the most flexible method because scouters can tailor from culture to culture, based on qualities that traditional education metrics wouldn't take into account.

It's a good idea! The Math Olympiad was a thing when I was in school. Just need to turn that into a more mainstream competition and build up a much larger culture and business around succeeding in it.

Sorry if it is bot clear. Is it a good or bad thing to teach music theory via visual depiction?

Bad practice. Music is auditory, so you need to focus on audio.

Of course, you need auditive input to study music (although interestingly medieval education would have disagreed with this). But visual depictions also help a lot with music theory. Seeing the structure of, say, a sonata's first movement visually makes it easier to understand certain aspects of it. The same is true of understanding relationships between different keys (e.g. the circle of fifths).

It's not an either/or, you need both.

Dual coding.

The material should present in multiple ways.

Visually AND verbally is preferred.

Gonna fall behind the new curriculum using perfume houses to craft real code smells.

I hear ya, but I still don't buy it. Teaching / learning is a fork of the communications heuristic:

"It's not what you say, it's what they hear."

Receivers (i.e., students) have a spectrum of receiving abilities, skills and expectations. Regardless of subject matter, to assume one size fits all (students) is (to put it bluntly) wrong.

Put another way, yes the topic factors is, but ultimately it's about the *individuals* receiving that information.

> I hear ya, but I still don't buy it.

One of my relatives was a learning styles proponent back in the 1980s and talked about it quite a bit. In my mind it feels like the conversation has moved from "here is a tool for you to consider" to "we have scientifically proven that you don't need to create lesson plans for each of The Five Formal Styles".

It feels like we might be missing the thread if we're able to talk about "debunking" a point of view.

you'll definitely find this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA interesting. Here they discuss the (lack of)efficacy of "visual learning"

shouldnt any class use hands-on practices, because you know, evolution and stones and stuff

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