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A number of resources and posts related to the March 1, 2012 Learning Styles Awareness Day
Interesting and thoughtful response to the eLearn Magazine article "Why Is the Research on Learning Styles Still Being Dismissed by Some Learning Leaders and Practitioners" by Guy Wallace. Donald ultimately agrees with the idea that instructional designers don't need to spend their time worrying about learning styles, but people who work with individual learners may find them valuable.
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That is, when you analyze a group, the findings often suggest that learning styles are relative unimportant, however, when you look at an individual, then the learning style often distinguishes itself as a key component of being able to learn or not.
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Thus the main take-away that I get from the paper if that if you are an instructor, manager, etc. who has to help the individual learners, then learning styles make sense. On the other hand, if you are an instructional designer or someone who directs her or his efforts at the group, then learning styles are probably not that important.
Comments from a number of experts dismissing learning styles, plus discussion on why we still talk about learning styles even though the research doesn't support it
Summary of a new report criticizing the lack of validity and reliability in learning styles research
Long post on learning styles, the controversies, and why we keep talking about them even when the research isn't solid
Cammy Bean's live blogged notes from DevLearn with Ruth Clark. Lots of this is the multimedia principles I've read before (and maybe don't always apply in authentic learning environments, but that's another story). The research on animations vs stills was new to me though.
A nice summary of reasons for students to blog. Even if you don't agree with everything (for example, the digital natives bit in #16), this is a good place to start answering the question.
I agree with the commenters who suggested this post would have been better on April 1, but it's a nice test of information literacy and common sense for people to read it now. How many teachers, trainers, and administrators do you think you could fool with this fake research?
Interesting perspective on learning style theories, arguing that they may be useful because they help teachers become more aware of how they're teaching, even if the research support for any given theory is lacking
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Learning styles seem intuitively sensible. Having thought about learning styles helps teachers improve their teaching and also helps increase their confidence and motivation. But there is no strong evidence that any one theory of learning styles is the best, or most true, compared to the others. Learning style theories can be useful without being true, and it isn't clear that knowing the truth about the differences in how people learn will be immediately useful or produce a more useful theory of learning styles. This difference between truth and utility is a typical dilemma of psychology.
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Using a learning style theory is great, but you lose a lot of flexibility and potential for change if you start to believe that the theory is based on proven facts about the way the world is, rather than just being a useful set of habits and suggestions which might, sometimes, help guide us through the maze of teaching and learning.
Book-length literature review on learning styles research, concluding that the usefulness of learning styles of pedagogy depends greatly on what model you use.
New link: https://crm.lsnlearning.org.uk/user/order.aspx?code=041543
Long PDF (84 pages) on learning styles research and how it can--and should--influence pedagogy. Examines 13 learning style models and finds a lot of variety in relability, validity, and general usefulness of the models.
https://crm.lsnlearning.org.uk/user/order.aspx?code=041540
A cognitive psychologist argues that learning styles, as the theory is generally understood, don't exist and aren't supported by research. He acknowledges that there are differences in visual and auditory memory, but says the research doesn't show that differentiating instruction based on learning styles actually has any effect.
Examines what cognitive science actually tells us about different learning styles and argues that the best answer is to choose the modality that best suits the content rather than adapting to the student.
- The idea of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is to create a number of different ways for students to access and interact with content and allow them to choose based on their personal strengths. Part of the research involved having the pre-service teachers determine their own learning preferences and Myers-Brigg Type. Over 85% of the teachers indicated an SJ type. - Christy Tucker on 2007-07-17
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