![]() ![]() What the learner knows already has a strong effect on how well they will learn new information. Using learners' prior knowledge to help them learn new things is one such approach. There’s a wealth of evidence-based teaching approaches that we are not exploiting. There are commercial interests in keeping the idea of learning styles and the meshing hypothesis alive, even when neuroscientists and psychologists insist that it is a ‘neuromyth’. However, shouldn’t research and evidence have priority over business interests when it comes to teaching? Schools pay a lot of money for learning style assessment instruments, training and applying the methods. Business interests are getting in the way of evidence My colleague Patricia Harries and I surveyed 332 English language teachers in 20 and found that 90 per cent believe that teaching to a learner’s learning style will improve learning.Ĥ. So, the only study that directly tests the meshing hypothesis finds no support for it. In spite of this, the meshing hypothesis has a strong hold on the English language teaching profession. Teaching to a learner’s preference does not improve learning. ![]() They found no relationship between a learner's supposed learning style on the one hand and her actual ability and performance on the other. They argued that no-one had successfully designed a study to directly test the meshing hypothesis.Īnother group of researchers Rogowsky and colleagues did exactly that by running two tests with a group of learners in 2015. The researchers Pashler and colleagues also criticised the research into learning styles. However, this common belief persists: if we cater to a learner’s preferred way of receiving information, learning will be improved. In that same paper, the researchers found no correlation between the learning style assigned objectively through the questionnaire and how well learners did on visual or auditory tests. There’s no evidence that accommodating learning styles improves learning How the students perceive themselves, and how they are categorised objectively doesn't match for the most part, making claims about one's supposed learning style unreliable.ģ. There was less than 50 per cent agreement between the self-report and the questionnaire. The second was a self-report, in which learners themselves said whether they thought they were visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learners. The first was asking them to fill in an established questionnaire, which assigned a learning style to each student. The researchers Krätzig and Arbuthnott tried to assign learners as either visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learners using two methods. Learning styles are not consistent attributes While it’s true that learners express preferences about how they want to receive information, scientists say this is nothing to do with how the brain works.Ģ. However, the brain is so interconnected that, as soon as one modality (e.g., sight, hearing) is activated, others are too. Different types of information are processed in different areas of the brain. Let’s clarify: the idea that some learners are primarily visual, auditory or kinaesthetic, and that learners learn in different ways because of how their brains work is incorrect, even though it originates in valid research. ![]() Neuroscientists say the idea doesn't make any sense But here are four reasons to reject the idea of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning styles.ġ. Many teachers believe that assessing learning styles and teaching to learners’ preferences will improve learning. Learners often express preferences about how they would like to receive information – by reading, hearing or doing - and these are often referred to as 'learning styles'. ![]() What are learning styles, and why do teachers identify them? English language teaching expert Carol Lethaby shows that this is no longer a viable view. There's a long-held view that students have different learning styles and that teachers have to adapt their teaching to those styles. ![]()
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