Associate Professor Steve Wheeler wrote a blog recently about learning styles titled A Convenient Untruth. In his blog Steve writes about the dangers of using the idea of learning styles to brand kids as one type of learner. It’s a good read and definitely something all teachers should be aware of so they don’t use learning styles theories without knowing all the facts. There has been research showing that learning styles don’t exist or aren’t as they have been purported to be so we need to read both sides of the whole learning styles thing.
I first learned about learning styles as part of my Masters work. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of different learning styles but the ones that I learned and worked with come from Silver and Hanson 1996. I took their learning styles inventory and found that I was stronger in the social learner learning style. The results also showed how much or how little I preferred the other three learning styles.
I have to admit that for me, as an adult, learning that I was a social learner came as a revelation. I hadn’t thought of myself as a social learner because as a kid I was terribly shy. Raising my hand to ask a question in class was something that terrified me and I don’t remember much group work in schooling so I never got the chance to see myself as a social learner. Looking back I would have benefited from Facebook and Twitter, but what occurred to me is that I do need to bounce ideas off of others before I can determine my understanding of things. I actually do learn best from discussion and argument. Knowing that learning styles inventories change each time you take them I never needed to take that inventory again. That is an argument against labeling people or yourself as one learning style, the fact that it can change every time you take the inventory.
So while I agree that placing students into categories based their “learning style” or labeling them as such is not good practice I still find some value in the whole learning style thing. I think that as a teacher anything that adds to my set of tools that help me educate children is good. So learning that there are different ways of learning and different ways of dealing with content helps me make sure I don’t just teach one way or using methods that I’m comfortable with. Take these different ways to reach the four learning styles I learned about. What’s the harm in using these different methods to reach as many of my students as I can? And how using different teaching strategies to include and engage more students be anything but helpful?
While I’m not saying that any of the aforementioned ways and strategies are only available to those who learn the learning styles that I learned while working on my Masters I am saying that I learned about them through my study of those learning styles and I believe that helped make me a better teacher. I’d rather be aware of learning styles than not.
Added December 18, 2023:
