Learning Styles & Preferences
Print
EmailTeaching a learner in the way that they believe they learn (ie, VARK) does not mean they learn better. Learning styles should be reframed as learning preferences. However, there can be value teaching in a way that includes a lot of variety so that different learning preferences are accommodated-- learning in a way a learner "likes" may keep them more engaged. References cited:
Husmann, P. R., & O’Loughlin, V. D. (2019). Another Nail in the Coffin for Learning Styles? Disparities among Undergraduate Anatomy Students’ Study Strategies, Class Performance, and Reported VARK Learning Styles. Anatomical Sciences Education, 12(1), 6–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1777
Knoll, A. R., Otani, H., Skeel, R. L., & van Horn, K. R. (2017). Learning style, judgements of learning, and learning of verbal and visual information. British Journal of Psychology, 108(3), 544–563. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12214
Also check out this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth-of-learning-styles/557687/?fbclid=IwAR226NWLbcR1J8Y3p7z1M4M85u-I0-VfcS_SuN77IvGDETwzUHglP-psf_8
Video Transcript
Do learning styles matter? Well? No, not really. Well. Actually, maybe they do. Maybe it's something we need to talk about a little bit more. So if we think about learning styles, we often think about VARK, VARK, visual, auditory reading and writing are kinesthetic and this used to be all the rage and teachers, they were always talking about it. Until research started uncovering that this isn't based on research. There's no research validating the idea. So nothing has proved, for example, that a self-professed visual learner actually learns better by being taught in ways that embrace visual learning. And the study that's shown here found that learners don't actually even tend to study the material that they're learning in a way that aligns with their professed learning style. And when they do study in that same way that they say they learned, they don't do any better. So why does this matter? Well, it has appeal because we all like what we like. And that's why we like to refer to this as learning preferences. So maybe there's value in teaching people in the way that they like to learn. Because if something is more pleasant than you're more likely to do it. And most people agree that motivation and attitude is really important and learning, if you focus your attention on something because you're annoyed or you're disengaged in class, then you're not going to learn it. And maybe how you like your information to be presented depends actually on the task at hand. For example, when I need directions, I want a map. But if I'm talking about learning a new language, I want to actually hear the new word in the new language before I see it. Here's another reason why learning preferences may matter. They can help the teacher think about how to present the same material in different ways. And doing this allows for variety and it allows for different types of processing and it's not as boring and repetitive. So yes, try and use teaching strategies that appeal to different learning preferences. But call them learning preferences and not learning styles.