A satire on learning styles

 

More than 50 years old.

By big companies their scales and trainings are sold

They tell you what is your mould

Knowing yours is like owing gold

 

If you don’t understand, If your grade is low

If learning is not exciting, If understanding is slow

You know, who took away your cool smile

They dint care for your learning style

What!!! they massaged you ALL with the same oil

 

It’s high time they should come to term

The fact is, you are different in the way learn

And if they don’t see your learning style

You can’t walk with them for a mile

 

To hell with knowledge

To hell with school

After all I am so cool

Until you learn what’s my style

I will not see that I am spoil.

 

In 3250, our class had another very interesting discussion on learning styles.  

 

Wow!! I never knew I would be so intrigued by the study of anything else, except for spirituality, research and analysis. I had always thought that they were my learning style. And then I started thinking, probably styles change, just like trends do. Don’t they?

 

Initially reading about learning styles being a myth was like believing in the moon hoax. It was exciting, contradicting and realizing- all at the same time. Like any stubborn-well knowing adult, I was not getting convinced.

 

After all, were those more than 50 years of research (Cassidy, 2004), over 71 different schemes of measurement (Pashler et. al. 2009 and Coffield et.al. 2004), big companies and universities training and running classrooms as per learning styles (Pashler et. al. 2009) all a waste??

 

And I had a mission…. God!! This course, when you take it seriously, it hits you like a drug. I have been on a high for the past 10 days and well, probably I would soon be addicted to learning. After all repetitive actions create habits.

 

I started to read, the forum in our class. This time it was being led by Kimberly and again she was doing a great job. I started reading and on and on I went.

 

The literature on learning styles is indeed overwhelming and before they started overriding them, probably it was like a learning style movement that was on. I found two very good papers one by Cassidy (2004) and the second one by Coffield et. al. (2004). Both had attempted to bring all those learning styles under one umbrella and they all agreed to one simple fact, that it was not possible as they were way too varied.  

 

Well broadly they stated that there were many brave groups of people, who tried to categorize the various scales on learning styles in different groups in order to find out which ones were the best measures. Famous among them are Curry (1983, 1987), Riding and Cheema (1991), Rayner and Riding (1997), De Bello 1990).

 

On a lighter note, it all sounded very funny. First there were numerous attempts to categorize people in groups, which resulted in numerous ways to categorize and then there were again numerous attempts to categorize those ways in groups to see which ways provided the best possible categorization. And then research moved to a different level which said, there is no evidence that these categorizations are valid and thus there is no need for all these categorizations.

 

Still, sometimes before understanding and accepting a popular concept as a myth, a natural urge is to find out all possible ways to prove it valid. And this leads to a plethora of research and literature which in the end has a high chance of being negated and rejected. This I guess is the story of learning styles too.

 

So I started finding out evidence that negated them and proved that they did not exist. Frankly, most of the research I found stated that there was a lack of evidence about their existence.

 

Pashler et. al. (2009) stated that efforts should be diverted to adopting resources in educational practices that had a strong evidence base rather on resources with a weak evidence base like the learning styles.

 

He gave very interesting reasons for the prevalence of learning styles. He said learning styles became popular because people like being categorized on their personalities and the idea of being treated as unique individuals has a great appeal, Moreover, when parents or children find that children are not doing well in schools, it easier to blame the schools or teachers for not adopting the learning style of the children.

 

I found another interesting rationalization for this fancy for learning styles in Sigmund Tobies response to a discussion on learning styles.  He had quoted a line in this discussion from Jeanne Chall’s (2000) book called romantic, as opposed to rational, view of education. Her quote was not for learning styles but seems to fit in well here too, in this discussion. It said:

 

“Sometimes an idea may appear so logical, and/or so deeply related to the values held by individuals, that it becomes an article of faith. Believers cling to their fancies irrespective of research findings.”