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TEDx Talks
Title: Learning styles & the importance of critical self-reflection | Tesia Marshik | TEDxUWLaCrosse
Published: 2015-04-02
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855Now8h5Rs
error is actually a few different versions actually many different versions of learning styles but probably the most common ones the one that you've heard as is that some of us are auditory learners we learn best by looking into things and that some of us are more visual learners where we learn best by steam things and that some of us might be more tactile or kinesthetic learners
where we learn best by actually doing things okay agent the collectivities how may have heard of that before well the good news and bad news the bad news is if you believe in learning styles are actually wrong and I'll explain that in just a minute but the good news is that it's not entirely your fault this belief in learning styles is incredibly pervasive it's so common
that few people ever think to even question it right it sounds so logical it sounds so real out but when put to the test we found that learning styles don't exist I know again there are tons of people that believe this when we survey for example students and teachers we find that something like ninety percent of them are over ninety percent of people believe that they
have a learning style and teachers today many teachers are still told that part of their job in order to be effective teachers if the figure out what their students learning styles are and then to accommodate them for the classroom there are even a host of companies and organizations out there that support learning styles and who for a feed will training on how to maximize your potential
or that of your students right by addressing learning styles and learning what yours are I but again the key is when put to the test these actually these learning styles don't exist and it doesn't make a difference now I will say that when we survey people many people say they have preferences so if I asked you how would you like to learn something or how would
you like to study many you might say things like I would prefer to see it or I'd prefer to hear it or I prefer to actually do it so that's true but the key is that those preferences don't actually enhance your learning when we test them an experimental conditions and this there are many different ways to test this but the basic design is this we bring
in a bunch of different people who have supposedly differently we teach them in a variety of ways right and then we see if teaching them in one way somehow was better for them active than other so for example let's say I have a list of words that I wanted you to right in one group I might show you that list of words that would prevent the
list of words she'll I or another group similarly I might actually show you images of those words in yet another group or another condition I might just let you listen to those words and hear them so you would actually see anything that you would just hear someone saying dog hose code it cetera now if learning styles exist said if it was true we would expect that
visual learners are so called visual learners would be able to recall more words when they saw them right to be there when they saw the list or when they saw the actual images and we would expect that so called auditory learners would be able to recall more where and when they heard them right but again the flaming is learning is actually the same the number of
words that you recall is exactly the same regardless of how the material is presented to you now I know that's just one example of one particular study but I'm asking you to trust me that this is been replicated in many different contacts with many different people of all different ages and tested in slightly different ways with exactly the same results impact there been several meta analysis
papers where they've looked at all the research on this topic for forty years and all of them have concluded the same thing that there's still no evidence that math team teaching styles to suppose that learning styles or students preferences actually makes a difference but I would encourage you to to look up some of this research on your own %HESITATION in in particular these review articles so
then how is that possible I'm sure some of you are wondering how does that even make sense right because it sounds so good and there's a lot of different research on learning and memory to to explain that but one of the main ideas is that most of what we learn in the classroom and most of what teachers want us to know in particular is stored in
terms of meeting and it's not tied to one particular sense or one particular sensory mode now it's also true just like people have preferences it's also true that some of you might have better visual memories are better auditory memories are auditory processing skills in compared to other people and that might be advantageous for certain types of tasks so for example if I wanted you to remember
what was the color of the coats on that last night or how many windows were on that house on the last flight than having a really good visual memory but help with that likewise if I had read you the list of words and I said what they read in a high voice or a low voice or which words were read by a woman and twins were
read by a man then having really good a really good auditory memory would help with that but those aren't typically the kinds of questions that teachers are asking you to remember the things that teachers want you to learn in the classroom mostly way of learning in the classroom is much more conceptual or meaning bass right it's not just what something looks like or what something sounds
like and by the way this time into this whole idea also helps to explain why simple rehearsal strategies like re reading your notes or just rewriting announce even though they're very commonly use strategies they tend to not be very effective because re reading your notes or rewriting your nose doesn't necessarily help you understand the material in order to retain information right we have to organize it
in a way that's meaningful right we have to make connections to a connecting it to our experiences are coming up with our own examples or thinking of how we're learning something in one class how that relates to what else we now that's what helps us remember it now again there's a lot of research to support this idea that most of what we learn is stored in
terms of meaning and not according to visual images are auditory sound but some of the best most relevant research comes from these classic studies that were done in the seventies now take them time and they were interested in chess players abilities to recall pictures of chess board games in progress so what they would do if they would show players and image of a game in progress
for a short time typically only five seconds or so and then it would disappear and then they would ask the players to recall where war where all the pictures where where all the pieces in that pic and what they found was a big difference between novice players are beginner players and experts beginner players last recall where the pieces where they can only remember about four pieces
right experts on the other hand could actually identify almost all of them over twenty of them could they correctly identified and the next game board when asked to recall these I now again they were interested in knowing you know why is this difference why do we see the stupid subject between beginners and novices and it wasn't because like you might be thinking that the experts had
better visual memories than the beginning it was because the experts had more experience playing chess and more knowledge in other words this game board with more meaningful to them right they could see the strategy involves they could imagine what was happening and why the players have their pieces position the way they did and the further support this idea they did a follow up study and the
follow up study they show chess players pictures of randomly arranged passports right and that's the th picture here not to you or I or it's a beginner chess player these might look basically the same I mean you have the pieces are in different places but for the most part they might be equally difficult sent to remember right to an expert though we found big differences when
presented with a randomly configured board once it was random experts no longer have an advantage in remembering pieces because it wasn't meaningful to them but because there's no meaningful arrangement and the second piece right they lost that advantage which again is just further evidence that we store information in terms of meaning and not according to a sensory mode and this basic finding by the way has
been extended to other contacts everything from Chastain basketball to computer programming and to dance right we'd store information in terms of meaning and not limited to particular sense remote so that's the first reason another reason why this learning styles theory doesn't pan out is that you know the best way to teach something or to learn something really depends on what it is you want to learn
right or it depends on the content itself now if I wanted you for example to know what a bunch of different songbirds looks like the best way to teach you that is to let you look at pictures of a somber to let you see them in real life right but know that that's true for everybody that's not true just because you're a visual learner right that's
because looking at them that's what I'm asking you to do is to remember what they look on the other hand if I wanted you to remember what they sounded like or to be able to distinguish between different songs of different sound very songbirds them letting you hear them would be the best way but again that applies to everybody just like if I wanted you to know
what different flower smell like the best way to teach you that is going to be it to let you experience those flowers by smelling them right but that doesn't mean you're an old factory learner her that you learn everything better through smelling I mean take a minute to imagine what that would look like in a math class earn an anatomy class right or a physics class
right into the observed as that sounds it's really important to remember that the same problems the same criticisms apply whether we're talking about so called olfactory winners or whether we're talking about auditory learners or visual learners or even kinesthetic plans right the last three might seem more palatable are more reasonable but the same issues apply it really depends on what I'm asking you to learn the
best way to teach it but that also brings me to another point and that's this idea that many things can be taught using multiple senses so it's not just limited to one for example so stay I wanted you to learn the game of football right probably the best way to teach a football is going to get you out to be to get you out there and
play football right to actually practice and having that physical experience playing but you'd also probably benefit from being able to watch a football game Urbina look at schematics or drawings of the different formations in the different positions just like you probably also benefit from hearing coaching her hearing feedback as you're playing right you're getting the kinesthetic experience the visual and the auditory similarly if the music
teacher wanted you to know the different parts of the symphony orchestra then yeah I'm going to an orchestra and listening to one would be beneficial but it would also add to the experience if you have the capability to touch the instruments or maybe to learn how to play them right would actually watch one live again it's not that different modes make it meaningful to different people
based on their learning style it's not like all the visual learners are only gonna learn by seeing and I it's because incorporating multiple sensory experiences into one makes their into one less and makes it more meaningful so then you might be wondering why does this myth persists I and there's a few different explanations in the first one is quite simply that everybody believes that right it's
so common that you never even think to question right how could so many people be wrong I have so many people believe it how is that possible that it's wrong but I do know just because something is commonly believed doesn't necessarily make it true remember just as an example at one point we used to think that the earth was the center of the universe right until
scientists like a predicate thing Galileo proved us otherwise right likewise there was a time in which some people actually believed %HESITATION were worried that polio might be caused by ice cream right which we now know is nonsense I. N. unfortunately even today %HESITATION one unfortunate myth that still process is this idea that vaccines cause autism despite the lack of any scientific evidence right just because god
allot of people believe it doesn't make it true and that might seem really obvious to you but again the key is the key ideas that when something so pervasive it doesn't even occur to people to challenge it right we need to be willing to critically reflect on believes even if they're commonly believed another reason why this process is quite frankly the idea of learning styles is
sexy right it sounds good it feels good right thinking people have different learning styles as another wave acknowledging that people are different and differences are important right especially when it comes to the classroom paper me saying that learning styles don't exist I'm not stain people are the same right people do differ in many important ways learning styles just isn't one of them and just because some
ideas sound really good just because we really want something to be true and doesn't make it so we have to remember that even when we're talking about something as appealing as Santa Claus unicorns big but Orleans and last but not least another reason why this Billy process is something called confirmation bias and this is this natural tendency that we have as humans to want to be
right I people don't like to be right so when herb don't like to be wrong they should say so when people have this belief right we tender any belief we tend to look for information that fits our beliefs and we ignore information that doesn't that are bullies right we don't really very frequently try to prove ourselves wrong right more often than not we try to prove
ourselves right we look for evidence to support whatever it is that we think and sometimes this is deliberate sometimes this bias is very deliberate so you all know that person who deliberate Lee closes their eyes are plug their ears and says well I'm I'm not listening I don't hear that and turns their back right but more often than not this is unintentional this is sub conscious
we don't even realize that we're doing how many of you for example has ever been thinking of someone only to have them call or text you or how many of you have experienced deja vu or had a dream only to have it come true right and you start to think well I've got something going on here right some extra sensory perception telepathic powers right again I'm
sorry to say you don right there's that's been studied a frequently too and there's no evidence to suggest that we have these tele communicating or tele communicated with powers to talk to each other right but the problem is that we notice every time it happens right we noticed every time we're thinking of someone and they call us because it's a cool coincidence right it's kind of