321 Learn! » learning styles

Guest Post: the Pencil

Jennifer Wagaman — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:35:08 +0000

I am an elementary school pencil. You might think my life is quite boring, but on the contrary, I live a very interesting life and have often wished for the opportunity to share some of my experiences with the teachers at my school. Here is my chance, so thanks for reading!

I often find myself being squeezed so tight I used to think that the child wanted to squish the lead out of me. As time went on, though, I realized that the child was in fact concentrating so hard on making me move in just the right ways. It makes me wish I could help a little, just to provide a bit of relief from the stress that the child feels.

When the teacher responds with comforting words and help, the pressure often lessens some, but all too often the well-meaning words don’t provide the help necessary and my point cracks from the pressure.

Another common experience I have is the inevitable tapping from a bored student. Thankfully, the tapping is usually on my eraser side, so I don’t generally lose my point over it, but sometimes it is on my point and I find myself making tiny dots all over a paper, book or the desk. If only the lesson were more interesting…

Speaking of making dots, teachers, please check the pictures that some of the students are drawing! My goodness, some of the things I find myself making are amazing! The talent that these kids have, and inevitably the reward the kid gets is a chastisement for not paying attention. It’s too bad you can’t find a way to use that drawing talent to enhance the lessons somehow.

While I am thinking about it, I wanted to say a quick thanks to those teachers who monitor the pencil sharpener – I hate it when I am wasted by being sharpened down to a tiny nub, and the poor fingers that try to hold me as a tiny nub, oh my.

Well, thank you for taking the time to read this, I will see you soon!

-The Pencil

Learning styles: An Error of Judgment

Jennifer Wagaman — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:10:26 +0000

Everyone is familiar with the concept of “learning styles” and I have classified myself as a visual learner and my eldest as an auditory learner. Research shows, though, that I may be more gullible than I thought because learning styles (visual, auditory, tactile) are not actually supported through scientific studies.

I, along with many other educational professionals have preached the importance of meeting students where they are so they learn best – display information, give auditory information and allow students the chance to manipulate objects, so that all three learning styles will be addressed and all students will have the best chance at learning the information. Likewise, I have been a huge proponent of home schooling because the parent can focus instruction in whatever way is best for their child’s learning style.

A group of men have come together to review the literature on learning styles and have determined two things:

First, most studies done on learning styles do not follow a randomized trial methodology and are thus not valid.

Second, those that are valid reveal contradictory results, meaning that studies that support the idea of learning styles are not able to be repeated, thus negating the theory.

An Idea Better than Learning Styles: Research Based Teaching

An NPR report on the issue provides a better idea – follow research based ideas for teaching:

Psychologist Dan Willingham says that studies show that “mixing things up” will help to boost attention and the closer students pay attention, the better they will learn. Additionally, studies show that the human brain retains information better when learned over months as opposed to cramming information into a short period of days or even weeks.

One benefit of mixing things up is this will also help maintain classroom management. The idea of spreading things out over months instead of weeks flies in the face of the modern education system, though. Teachers often complain about the lack of time available to teach any one concept. A commonly agreed upon statement is that teachers have the time to introduce concepts, and the bright students will master these concepts, but there is no time to extend the concepts into the abstract for mastery for all students.

Changes Needed in Curricula and Teaching Methods

I would be willing to bet that this concept of spreading learning out supports the spiral curriculum method, where students are able to return to the same concepts over and over as they learn. That said, I would think that the traditional “grade level” curriculum, specifically for math skills, needs to be revamped in order to avoid teaching skills in isolation. This is something that Shiller Math does a great job of.

It’s time to stop spending what precious few dollars we have in the schools on in-service training that focuses on learning styles and instead focus on how students are similar. Really, the idea is intriguing – do students learn best differently or the same? I would bet that the assembly line method of grouping students together by age might be less an issue than it is a precursor – we grouped students by a similarity and then tried to separate them after the fact by learning style. How does that make sense?

Maybe we need to find more ways that students are similar instead of spending so much time focusing on differences. One similarity I can think of off of the top of my head is the fact that ALL students, without exception, will learn better when interested and excited about learning. Maybe that is a better place to start lesson planning!

Do not Differentiate Your Instruction…or Should You?

Jennifer Wagaman — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:45:18 +0000

After reading a post on the Pennington Publishing Blog, I started to thinking about learning styles. While I agree with much of what Mr. Pennington says, I wanted to take a moment to comment on each of his points about why we should not teach to student’s learning styles.

Oversimplification of how the brain works shouldn’t impact our teaching. The argument here is that those who try to explain how the brain works through multiple intelligences or learning styles are oversimplifying a complex matter and thus differentiated instruction is useless. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense to me – if I oversimplify how a car engine works by saying I put gas in the tank and it makes the car go, does this mean I shouldn’t bother pushing the pedal to change my speed? Teaching based on oversimplified understanding of the brain is at least something.
The research doesn’t show improved results with differentiated instruction in the three learning styles. Gee, if it were that easy we wouldn’t have a problem with the public school system, would we? Mr. Pennington himself says that there are too many variables to make a “statistically significant conclusion” regarding how to teach.
It is important for all students to practice even weak areas of learning. This is 100% true. Although that said, I am not sure that proves anything. Any teacher would agree that a student who is auditory, for example, should also learn to write. It would be impossible for any teacher to only teach individual students in their particular learning style.
Focus on the content of instruction rather than the mode. This is a key point that while valid doesn’t prove anything regarding learning styles either. It is true that students need to be taught content. In fact, this is a huge issue because there is so much testing and other “stuff” thrown into the school day that many teachers have a tough time teaching all of the content necessary to the point that the child is competent in the new information. If the how of instruction is overtaking the what, there is a problem, but that said, the best teachers are the ones whose mode of instruction allows for more content to be taught.
Differentiating instruction puts limits on kids because it places them in predefined categories. While this may very well be true for many or even most teachers, this is not a reflection of learning styles. The best teaching method is one that includes each modality of learning so that all children can learn the material in both their areas of strength and weakness.

Conclusion? Learning styles may be oversimplified but they help teachers understand a little about how a child learns. A child’s brain is not a blank slate to be filled with whatever information the teacher deems appropriate. While the research may not support it, teachers believe it, so instead of attempting to debunk differentiated instruction and explain how wrong it is to teach that way, teachers should instead be taught how to do it right.

Same Sex Classrooms

Jennifer Wagaman — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:38:40 +0000

On the Today Show this morning there was talk about a new phenomenon in the United States called “same sex classes”. The idea is that boys and girls learn differently, and thus are placed in separate classrooms. There are both public and private schools in various areas that have in one way or another adopted this type of learning environment. All together, there are 518 schools that are divided between the sexes.

This concept is interesting, and there is preliminary evidence that test scores are higher in these schools. The problem with this type of learning environment is that boys and girls learn a lot from each other, and when separated, they lose that aspect of learning.

In addition, there are more differences in learning style than there is in gender. In a single classroom of all boys, there will be a mix of auditory, visual and tactile learners, each one learning best, differently than the other. So while there may be some benefits to separating the genders into separate classrooms, it may not prove the most effective in the long run.