learning+styles

//What i've been finding of late disturbs me somewhat, although i can't really say that i'm surprised, as there is no real grounding for what intelligence is or indeed how it operates. Learning styles, although provocative to the imagination, do not exist. There are plenty of studies and comments on this that seem to signify a growing culture against these concepts, hopefully towards realism. Unfortunately, I suspect it will be those large pegagogic monopolies that will be the last to catch on.//

[|Professor Frank Coffield], of the Institute of Education, [|writes in the Guardian]: "Next time you see a learning styles questionnaire, burn it [we] produced two reports for the now defunct Learning and Skills Development Agency, which got cold feet and refused to launch them. It was afraid, as one of the government's "delivery partners", to back research it had itself funded, in case it upset the DfES. Our reports reviewed, systematically, 13 models of learning styles and concluded that this area of research is theoretically incoherent and conceptually confused. I listed in the reports 30 dichotomies, such as "activists" versus "reflectors", "globalists" versus "analysts", and "left brainers" versus "right brainers". We should stop using these terms. There's no scientific justification for them. 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." 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. It is when the senses are activated together - the sound of a voice in synchronisation with the movement of a person's lips - that brain cells fire more strongly than when stimuli are received apart."
 * Baroness Greenfield** doesn't like learning styles as this [|slightly breathless article attests].

[|Learning Styles are Bunk] is, well, you get the picture from the title. "The myth of learning styles is based on three faulty premises: learning styles are intrinsic, learning styles can be assessed, learning styles can be matched to instructional styles. Snyder points out that all three premises are untrue."


 * Robert Bacal ** answers this question[|on his own blog]:"You can’t really provide different activities for learners with different styles, for practical reasons, and it turns out you may not want to anyway. The research on this is rather copious, and I’d guess that the majority of trainers have never looked at a single journal article on this topic, much less reviewed the field properly. It turns out there is some research to suggest that people learn better if you use a style that involves a mismatch with the preferred style. Generally speaking if you spend a year or two reading the body of learning styles research, you’d probably a) discover the findings are all contradictory, and b) realize that the reason for all the contradictory findings is that learning styles and matching simply are not very important for instructional success."

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//Daniel Willingham is one of the leading opponents to the concept of learning styles, writes:// Here are four common complaints, along with my response. (1) Scientists are always changing their minds about everything. Just wait a few years, and they will say that learning styles do exist. Unlikely. Mainstream scientists have proposed and tested learning styles theories but there has never been a body of data that they thought reflected learning styles. (2) No one has proven that learning styles don’t exist. We just don’t have data yet showing that they do. Of course. One can never prove a negative. Learning styles might exist. So might the Loch Ness monster and the Yeti. For a researcher, one has to wonder whether it’s worth the expense to keep looking for something that no one can find. For a teacher, you have to ask whether “it’s not proven that it doesn’t exist” is good enough to bring a practice into a classroom. Imagine your doctor prescribing a patient medicine, and when you ask about its effectiveness your doctor shrugs and says, “No one has proven that it doesn’t work.” (3) I know that there are learning styles. [Insert story here about oneself, one’s child, one’s students, etc.] It’s so obvious! There is a reason that people use the scientific method to address complex questions: It’s hard to keep track of all of the variables that might be involved, or even to keep track of all the outcomes. You have to be systematic about it. That’s basically what the scientific method forces you to do. Is that really necessary? Shouldn’t it be obvious whether or not people have learning styles? For a couple thousand years it wasn’t obvious to physicians that bloodletting didn’t work. When there are lots of factors contributing to outcomes, you really need to do research. (4) Learning styles exist, but scientists can’t find evidence for them because they are too rigid about it. It’s not that every child has one style that applies to every task. Everyone uses combinations of styles, and figuring out a child’s style and how it relates to their work is more of an art than a science. Scientific theories do need to be specific enough that they can generate predictions. If you can’t write down on a piece of paper. “Under conditions X with person Y, Z ought to happen,” it’s not a scientific theory.

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Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence Harold Pashler, 1 Mark McDaniel, 2 Doug Rohrer, 3 and Robert Bjork 4 1 University of California, San Diego, 2 Washington University in St. Louis, 3 University of South Florida, and 4 University of  California, Los Angeles

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. Further research on the use of learning-styles assessment in instruction may in some cases be warranted, but such research needs to be performed appropriately. Moreover, the learning-styles concept appears to have wide acceptance not only among educators but also among parents and the general public. This acceptance is perhaps not surprising because the learning-styles idea is actively promoted by vendors offering many different tests, assessment devices, and online technologies to help educators identify their students’ learning styles and adapt their instructional approaches accordingly (examples are cited later).

AN OVERVIEW OF LEARNING STYLES: DOCTRINES AND INDUSTRY As described earlier, the concept of learning styles encompasses not only a large body of written materials but also what seems to be a thriving set of commercial activities. The writings that touch on the learning-styles concept in its broadest sense include several thousand articles and dozens of books. These figures may seem surprisingly large, but one should keep in mind the sheer number of different schemes or models of learning styles that have been proposed over the years. For example, in a relatively comprehensive review, **Coffield et al. (2004) described 71 different schemes,** **and they did not claim that their list was exhaustive**. The commercial activity related to learning styles is largely centered around the publishing and selling of measurement devices to help teachers assess individual learning styles; typically, although not always, these devices classify the learner into different style categories. Testing has been recommended by organizations at all levels of education that might be presumed to base their recommendations on evidence. For example, the National Association of Secondary School principles commissioned the construction of a learning-styles test that it distributed widely (Keefe, 1988). Similarly, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (2009) currently maintains a Web site that offers advice for Yale instructors; the site informs visitors that ‘‘college students enter our classrooms with a wide variety of learning styles.’’ The site goes on to recommend that instructors determine their own ‘‘modality of learning’’ as well as assess their students’ learning styles and make their instructional choices accordingly.

Furthermore, the learning-styles concept is embraced in a number of current educational psychology textbooks. For instance, Omrod (2008) wrote, ‘‘Some cognitive styles and dispositions do seem to influence how and what students learn. . ..

//I shall just remind the reader here that Thurstone's mental abilities were often considered as a guide for the properties of intelligence.// …There is little doubt that specific-ability differences of this kind exist. The first psychologist to provide strong empirical evidence for the idea of specific-ability differences was Louis Thurstone (e.g., Thurstone, 1938). Thurstone proposed seven ‘‘primary mental abilities’’: verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, and reasoning. Although these abilities are not completely uncorrelated (implying, to some, the idea of general mental ability or ‘‘g’’; see Jensen, 1998; Spearman, 1927), they do show a moderate degree of independence (Thurstone, 1938). Although this provides evidence for specific aptitudes, it does not show that one needs to provide different groups with different forms of instruction to maximize their performance on any single outcome test. Thus, evidence for specific aptitudes does not, by itself, validate the learning-styles hypothesis.

**CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS**

Our evaluation of the learning-styles concept led us to identify the form of evidence needed to validate the use of learning-style assessments in instructional settings (i.e., Figures 1A–1C). As described earlier, our search of the learning-styles literature has revealed only a few fragmentary and unconvincing pieces of evidence that meet this standard, and we therefore conclude that the literature fails to provide adequate support for applying learning-style assessments in school settings. Moreover, several studies that used appropriate research designs found evidence that contradicted the learning-styles hypothesis (Massa & Mayer, 2006; Constantinidou & Baker, 2002). Finally, even if a study of a particular learning-style classification and its corresponding instructional methods was to reveal the necessary evidence, such a finding would provide support for that particular learning-style classification only—and only then if its benefits surpass the high costs of student assessments and tailored instruction.

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Vol 5, No. 2, May 2009, pp.19-34[]© Institute of Education, University of London ISSN 1746-9082 =A reflection on the future of the cognitive style field: a proposed research agenda= Eva CoolsVlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Belgium ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to build further on previous suggestions for the advancement of the style field by focusing on six critical issues in the area of the theory, measurement, and practical relevance of cognitive styles. Summarising these critical issues, it is suggested that it is necessary to(1) provide conceptual clarification by situating cognitive styles in the individual differences field,(2) develop an overarching, contextualised individual differences model, (3) conduct longitudinal, contextual research designs to find the origins of cognitive style, (4) search for fundamental cognitive style dimensions in the myriad of cognitive style models, (5) evolve from self-report questionnaires to multi-source, multi-method approaches, and (6) bridge the relevance gap by different approaches of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination.

On the basis of an overview of past and present work, an agenda for future research in the field of cognitive styles is proposed. Ideally, cognitive style research should evolve towards ‘pragmatic science’, which combines high theoretical rigour with high practical relevance.According to Curry (2006), the advancement of the field can be established by three related approaches: (1) conceptual clarification in the bewildering array of definitions and conceptualisations of the style concept; (2) clear demonstration and accumulation of the validity and reliability of measures to indicate that they meet minimum standards for use and interpretation; and (3) continuous attention for the relevance of the field for practice by providing answers to the ‘so what?’ question.

The relationship between cognitive styles and abilities has been the subject of continuous debate among cognitive style researchers (Armstrong, 2000; Furnham, 1995). Riding and Rayner (1998) referred to style and ability as the two major characteristics that are studied in the context of individual variations in cognitive processing. Cognitive styles are considered to be unrelated to ability in general (Mudd, 1996; Riding & Rayner, Abilities have been characterised as (1) value directional (i.e., having more of an ability is better than having less), (2) enabling (i.e., facilitating task performance in particular areas), and (3) domain specific factors.
 * Link between cognitive style and ability**

Cognitive styles have been described as (1) value differentiated (i.e., particular cognitive styles have adaptive value under specified circumstances), and (2) organising and controlling variables (i.e., contributing to the selection, combination, and sequencing of the content and process, and regulating the direction, duration, intensity, range, and speed of functioning), (3) which cut across domains (Messick, 1994). Although cognitive styles and ability are considered to be independent, some studies have found a relationship between certain cognitive style measures and ability (Allinson & Hayes, 1996). It might be useful for future research to investigate the possible moderating effect of type of task on the cognitive style–ability relationship (Armstrong, 2000). Moreover, other aspects, such as motivation, strategies to learning, social work context, dyadic matching, or prior experience, may also affect the relationship between cognitive styles and ability (Armstrong et al., 2004). Hence, building a more complex model to investigate the link between cognitive style and ability can contribute to enhanced knowledge about their interrelation.

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