Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence

Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence

Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence begins by concluding based on the limited amount of educational resources that our time and money would be better off placed in educational practices that have strong evidence base.   Given the tough economic times that everyone is facing is it time to throw the concept of  intervention of instructions based on learning styles? This effort is in responses to the growing popular belief that we could best serve our students by concentrating our efforts towards implementing learning styles assessments into educational practices. (Pashler, 2009). I am not so sure if we should scrap this concept just yet.  The articles present some very convincing evidence why this path maybe a waste of rare and valuable resources much of which is based on the lack of reproducible evidence.  There may not be enough conclusive evidence to justify reshaping an entire process however there is also not enough evidence to conclude that learning styles has no real merit.  If anything I believe that more evidence is needed. 

The author discusses several popular marketing instruments used to profile student’s learning preference.  Kolb’s is one such instrument, this inventory which categorizes the learning process into two dimensions, the preferred mode of perception and preferred mode of processing (Pashler, 2009).  The article identifies others as well most of which is caters to the overwhelming desire of the school systems to best serve our student.  The ever widening achievement gaps between, poor ethnic groups and the dominant culture are forcing school boards to not omit any possible remedy.  This notion of examining and then presenting instruction based on students learning styles has most of its bases in theory and observation.  Teachers as well as prominent psychologist have noted that student’s reception of information has a link to how the information is presented.  For example, if the learner is a ‘‘visual learner,’’ information should, when possible, be presented visually. We refer to this specific instance of the learning-styles hypothesis as the meshing hypothesis—the claim that presentation should mesh with the learner’s own proclivities. Most proponents of the learning-styles idea subscribe to some form of the meshing hypothesis, and most accounts of how instruction should be optimized assume the meshing hypothesis: p108-109 (Pashler, 2009).  The authors discuss Visualizer–Verbalizer Questionnaire (VVQ, which was a study that indicated evidence that student responded better to information that had visual ques rather than verbal. 

The article address several studies that have no conclusive or repeatable data which would support undeniable need to change current method of interventions based on learning styles of our students.  The article alludes to but does not specifically address a teacher’s particular teaching style.  Maybe the assessments must begin with the teacher to determine which student would benefit from a particular teacher.  There are several schools which give parents/students a personality assessment, prior to placing the students in a teacher’s classroom for the upcoming year.  I am not convinced that we need to abandon the research that support learning styles.  The bottom line is it comes to how do we best serve all of our students and if this proves to help some then we cannot abandon it.

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., Bjork, R. (2009). Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science, 9(4), 105-119.