Photo courtesy of Flickr user skpy
If you were a student or teacher in the past 30 years, you’ve likely heard about learning styles. In case you haven’t, here’s the basic theory:
Every brain has different strengths and weaknesses in how it encodes new information. If we map these strengths and weaknesses, we can detect that brain’s bias and learn that person’s particular learning style, the way that his/her brain prefers to learn. Learners can take advantage of knowing their own biases by changing how they study. Because everyone has a different learning style, teachers should present material in diverse ways appealing to many different learning styles to best serve all their students.
The whole idea that we can somehow learn better by understanding our brain better is appealing, and the concept of learning styles seems so intuitively correct, that many people have made it a central tenant of their teaching philosophies without any further research. That further research suggests that learning styles are a myth. What’s more, we need to be cautious of the unintended consequences the learning style myth. Continue reading ‘Why I hate learning styles and why you should too’
