Talk:Learning styles

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This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, which collaborates on Psychology and related subjects on Wikipedia. To participate, help improve this article or visit the project page for details on the project. Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale. Article Grading: The following comments were left by the quality and importance raters: (edit comments - comment history - watch comments · refresh this page) In agreement with Tweeker, I am an Ed. D. candidate (my school with go unnamed for now), my entire dissertation is based on the theory that there is no such thing as learning styles, only teaching styles, learning is a voluntary participatory process, which can be invoked with or without a formal (traditional) teacher or teaching environment. 137.190.80.161 (talk) 17:27, 14 May 2008 (UTC)Skyhawk

This page needs a major rewrite - it should become an impartial article represention the major models in this area, and balancing out the views of the proponents with the views of the critics. user:PatrickMerlevede 2 November 2005

Though it is an improvement over the original page, it is still biased in favor or learning styles theory. Too many resources cited and not enough discussion of the case against learning styles.

Tweeker 11 February 2006

Contents 1 Potential sources: 2 Parent Subject: learning 3 Percentages 4 Criticism Section

[edit] Potential sources:

• University of Minnesota resources on learning styles
• Myers-Brigg and learning styles
• Tutorial on learning styles
• Indiana State University learning styles site
• Paragon learning styles inventory
• James Madison University learning styles site
• University of South Dakota learning styles resources
• Rats in a Maze Take a Moment to Remember, but in Reverse
  • Picower researcher explains how rats think

This may represent a new learning style for humans: the ability to retrace a learning path in reverse

[edit] Parent Subject: learning

A search for "learning" included lots of unlinked pages, such as "learning psychology," "psychology of learning," "learning styles," etc. Next project: incorporating these related subjects into a comprehensive and useful set of entries and links...

[edit] Percentages

It has now been added that 25 % of people are auditory, 40 % kinaesthetic and 30 % visual learners. I have seen many different numbers for this, and I am not convinced the source book Graphic Design is the most credible source for this article. I wonder if the given distribution is based on research - they often aren't. Anyway, I remember Carla Hannaford claiming that 78 % of students are kinaesthetic, but some argue it should be more than 85 % (there is some confusion with Hannaford's "research" and Dunn's "research" here). Again, the statistics page on the VARK website gives a very different distribution with multimodal learners included.

There are two main problems with finding out how many people belong to which group:

1. the assessment instruments have been found to suffer from poor reliability. This means there's no guarantee someone diagnosed as auditory, for instance, is actually an auditory learner.
2. there is no validated theoretical base for claiming that people are either visual, auditory or kinasthetic. In fact, many proponents argue that some - or most - people use all three strategies in learning.

I suggest the percentages be deleted, but we could state that the estimation of how many people are visual etc. varies. Piechjo 11:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I added the percentiles and think they are important but—yes—problematic and are not critical to keep. The author of that source, Muneera Spence, cites "Meyers-Briggs and other psychological theories." The source is a lecture, so it might not be the most verifiable. However, she does fit WP:RS because she has academic, peer-reviewed publications (1, 2, 3, 4) and is an academic (currently an associate professor at OSU; 1979 MFA, Yale) who conducts research and cites her sources.

For full disclosure: I have been in her classes and therefore may have conflict of interest. —Parhamr 03:34, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I would like to insist that peer-reviewed research that reports methods and data be cited to back up the claims about percentages of different 'learning styles' and similar claims. With good cause, educational psychologists who research instructional methods tend to view many of the beliefs about learning styles as pseudo-science.Nesbit 04:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Those details are essential. Remove/revert/undo my edit, if desired. —Parhamr 05:09, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think I will because now that the percentiles have been added there are people who disagree about them. And there's still probably no real research base for any claim. Piechjo 17:45, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism Section

The criticisms "Evidence or Lack of Evidence?" section is...erm...bigger than the section with actual information on the subject. I'm thinking it should be trimmed a bit, or at least the informative section should be expanded upon. Anyone well-versed in the subject who can write on it? 67.70.98.102 (talk) 23:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the critical section should in general be smaller than the informative section. Here the problem seems to be that the critical section is a good start, but the informative section isn't so informative. General information should be added, but I wouldn't trim the critical section because it's the best part of the article and by no means too long in itself. Piechjo (talk) 16:12, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I did a little edit on the criticism section to remove incorrect - unnecessary referencing to the Demos report - the authors names are not significant. In general this article needs a re-write as it is not at all objective, it is very confrontational and does not present either position from an objective viewpoint. (Ardalby (talk) 16:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC))

The problem is no one has bothered to write about learning styles from a neutral pov. Furthermore, there are as many views as there are (competing) learning styles models. ELSIN and its journal could be a starting point. I've understood that the idea of learning styles is now rejected by most researchers, but it's popular among the masses. One proof of that are the numerous school kids that constantly show up vandalising the article. Apparentely they've been sent by their teacher to find information on learning styles. Piechjo (talk) 12:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Piechjo, that is not completely true but I understand what you mean - to be objective which this whole article is not learning styles play a part in how students behave but so does the social context, the learning context etc. So Phenemenography is another approach that combines more factors. The criticisms based on brain scan data miss the point - this is not saying there is a structure in the brain or a pattern of brain activity that means I have a certain learning style, it is saying that people have personalised views of the world which can be grouped into these rough categorise with regard to learning. It is not meant to be quantitative but it does not make it any less valid. I would still like my edits to stand as the reference to the Demos report is wrong. Hargreaves is from Wolfson Cambridge and not Exeter! (Ardalby (talk) 16:00, 15 April 2008 (UTC))

Thank you for pointing out the error. Personally, I have read the Demos report and the quotes seem to be right. I also remember reading the ELSIN respond to Coffield saying there are better models than VAK. There's also a more recent ELSIN respond. I don't think it's all a matter of some brain scan data. Learning styles have been severely criticised since the end of the 1980s and the main issue is that there's no solid evidence for any of the claims. There are, in addition to learning styles, also cognitive and epistemological styles that might make more sense. I suppose psychologists agree that there are personality differences and this affects studying. I don't, however, believe that psychologists agree that learning as a cognitive process varies from one individual to the other except to the extend that some people learn better than others. Consequently, one of the fundamental questions in LS research has been whether people should stick to their style or whether they should learn a better way to study. This is one of the many things that should probably be discussed in the article. What I'm worried about is Wikipedia being used by commercial companies as advertising space because almost all LS models are commercial products, and the trademark owners have rarely been eager to give people the right idea of their scientific basis. Piechjo (talk) 18:07, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I definitely agree with your last point - there is not such thing as an open source LS questionnaire - except I think that my tutor had an agreement with Honey and Mumford as she was a colleague of theirs! Pasks studies did suggest that you could cause serious problems for study if you mismatched holist and serialist approaches with students who had the opposite style. This seriously affected learning in these extreme cases, but there are too many different LS descriptors and there is an awful lot of context. As a statistician I think there are more variables than I would care to consider. Sorry I was a bit flaming before (Ardalby (talk) 20:46, 17 April 2008 (UTC))