Learning Styles and Teaching Styles (Part 1)

Teaching styles are abundant. Imagine the variety of teachers, personalities, and the technologies available. The same can be said about learning styles. Imagine the diversity of student backgrounds, languages, experiences, and characters within the classroom.

Here we are going to talk about learning styles...

But are learning styles to even be considered? Well, a recent article from The Huffington Post reexamines the importance of leaning styles. Russell Poldrack, the author of the article, says:

But the fact that I prefer to learn visually or verbally is completely different from whether I actually learn better when taught visually or verbally.

That's a great point. 

Consideration #1: In fact, I can't say with confidence that I know myself well enough to judge myself accurately. And I am not different than most people. 


Consideration #2: Would I want something to cater to my learning style when I fully believe in desirable difficulties? 


This is what Psychology Today has to say about things that are made too easy:

Making learning too easy and straightforward can cause a misleading boost in the retrieval strength without causing the deeper processing that encourages the long-term retention afforded by higher storage strength.

Schoolhouse Rock, as catchy as the lyrics and melody are, never did teach me conjunctions. I love music and cartoons and obnoxious voices, but that exactly was the problem! They couldn't seriously have really expected me to pay attention, well, at least in the way they wanted! 


Though I really really really wish I could be as marvelous as Ms. Frizzle, us mere earthlings are in no position to conduct the kinds of experiments and class field trips that she did. But we can learn from her that we, as human beings, have spent millions of years absorbing our experiences through our 5, arguably 6, senses and that there is no reason to cut and tailor our lessons to match solely the eyes, or the ears, or the touch of the hands of our students. Activities and exercises will always make use of 1 sense more than the other. This happens naturally. Human beings have always been experiencing the world in its natural form. 


My point is that, with sufficient research evidence, it is safe to say that the teacher should put more work into creating a variety of learning material to match her own interesting, exciting, and well-developed taste. Not because her class is full of X type learners. All in all, we reach the same ends using different means. We are asking for diversity within the classrooms because our intellects, and those of our students, demand it.