Learning Styles: Useful or a Crock?

John Wills Lloyd points me to an article in the London Telegraph  by Julie Henry, on objections to the scheme introduced in 2004 that  classifies children

as belonging to one of three groups: auditory, visual and kinaesthetic - they learn best either by listening, by reading and through pictures, or by moving, touching and doing.

The school inspection service, Ofsted, and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which regulates the exam system, have both endorsed the methods, telling schools that they can achieve better results than conventional lessons in which children listen to the teacher and copy from the board.

Baroness Greenfield's heavyweight criticism will be welcomed by academics who have been trying to debunk the notion of learning styles, as it fast becomes education orthodoxy in the UK.

Frank Coffield, a professor at London University's institute of education, who reviewed 13 models of learning styles, insists that the approach is theoretically incoherent and confused.

"As well as Vak, I came across labelling such as 'activists' versus 'reflectors', 'globalists' versus 'analysts' and 'left brainers' versus 'right brainers'. There is no scientific justification for any of these terms," he said.

"We do students a serious disservice by implying they have only one learning style, rather than a flexible repertoire from which to choose, depending on the context."

Comments

[John Lloyd]

Liz, I'm glad you picked up on this story, too. It deserves dissemination. Hooray for Baroness Greenfield's comments. Also, in addition to the entries on LD Blog at which you pointed, there are several on Teach Effectively!

[mcewen]

I'll be interested to see how it pans out.
Cheers

[Joel Sax]

As a reading tutor, I've found it helpful to present a lesson in a variety of ways. However, I don't follow any orthodoxy when it comes to learning styles.

I think this sort of thing arises because teachers find themselves faced with students who they cannot reach and yet don't want to give up on.

[Taylor]

Could someone help me to understand what the objection is to learning styles? The Baroness seems to be saying that there is no neurological basis for them, which I concede.

But meta-cognition is worthwhile, I think. Getting students to think about their thinking is a good thing, in my view.

As I see it, the problem comes in when we fail to make it clear to the students that these are just tools. I usually give students 2 or 3 inventories, stressing that they should remember that their styles will change over time, that they can always learn new skills, and that they may fit into more than one category. I usually also have the students write a paragraph or two explaining their interpretation of the results. This is all, in my view, just a way of getting them to think about their own learning and to open up discussion on strategies to improve their own skills.

I see how it could be a problem, too, if the results of these inventories are codified into law or regulations. They aren't accurate enough to rise to that level, but they can be useful.

Am I missing something on this?