Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.Having done a lot of work with teachers, including award-winning teacher, I can tell you that these theories are immensely popular among teachers and that they are taught at teacher's colleges all across the continent. And yet, it's just junk science.
It's important to underline the point here: the people who are supposed to be the best authorities on education really believe this crap. They push it on parents and children and launch initiatives to pressure governments to provide extra funds to create special programs to meet needs that don't exist. I've sat through literally hundreds of presentations by teachers over the last decade and a half where they have pushed the idea of different learning styles.
The same is true, by the way, of repressed memories, about which another study released this week found no credible evidence for. Ann Althouse, who gets the H/T for this link, reminds us that innocent people were sentenced to hundreds of years in jail based on repressed memories that, it turns out, do not exist.
Again, this is what the smart people believe. Now, why do we say they are smart again?
I agree with you about repressed memories, that has been totally discredited.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I agree with you about learning styles. I was a mediocre student in elementary school, high school (except in the subjects I was really interested in),and undergrad school (again, except in the subjects I was really interested in). Math was a lost cause for me from day 1, only by the grace of Sister Mary Imo (that was her name) did I get through Algebra I. This despite, I was told, the fact that I have an above average I.Q. I did much better in grad school, especially in the seminar classes, which had only 8-10 students at the most. No one in elementary school, high school, or undergrad school would have predicted I would be accepted to and succeed in an Ivy League graduate school program--least of all me. I didn't apply to grad school until I was in my mid-30s, and I believe that the essay that I was required to write on the admisions app and the personal interview I requested was the reason I was accepted, it certainly wasn't my undergrad GPA. So, I think there is something to the idea that people learn differently, whether they fully understand how and why I guess is open to question.
I don't know what studies they refer to that show that people don't learn differently. I know from my work with people with developmental disabilities and acquired brain injury that they do learn and process information than those in the general population. There are other studies that show that people with ADD/ADHD (which I was diagnosed with about 2 yrs ago) learn differently. That is sufficient explanation for me for why I never acheived my full potential in my early school years before grad school.
ReplyDeleteLike a lot of junk science, the notion of different learning styles starts with a kernel of truth. There is lots of evidence that people aren't good at learning certain types of content. There are people who are not good at dealing with verbal concepts, for example, and others who are not good at figuring out maps.
ReplyDeleteThe theory behind learning styles was that you could compensate. That if you had a child who was poor at verbal learning, you could put the emphasis on some other learning style and they'd be able to make up the lost distance there. That is what there is virtually no evidence for.
I think we all try to compensate--especially people of my generation who grew up before anybody even knew about any of this--sometimes successfully sometimes not. When I was in high school, they brought in a State social/vocational worker to test us to see what types of professions we should pursue. After testing me, and hearing from me that I planned to go to college, she suggested that I would do better at a trade school. Fortunately, I didn't take her advice--a TRADE SCHOOL! Not that there is anything wrong with a trade school, but I had no interest in plumbing, being an electrician, or learning how to be a mechanic. If I had taken her advice, my life would have been wasted and I would never have been able to do the things that amaze even me sometimes, e.g., going to an Ivy-league school and, from time to time, being asked to testify in Court as an expert witness, which in some cases helped innocent people who were unjustly accused. I was able to do it because with the help of some key people who saw the potential I had, despite all evidence to the contrary, I learned to believe in myself, so I began to find ways of compensating for the deficits I had. In addition, I began to realize over time that I had learned more than I and my teachers thought, even though the standardized tests did not reflect that, which says a lot about standardized testing.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to repressed memories, I don't know if Ann Althouse addresses this but this was worse than junk science. This was a bona fide insurance scam linked to the other bogus "ritual satanic abuse syndrome." NOVA on PBS did a two-part, four hour expose in the mid-90s about how a small group of psychologists and psychiatrists in Philadelphia had conspired to create these bogus syndromes as a way of bilking insurance companies and Medicare. When this program first aired, legitimate clinicians were horrified and didn't believe it, but by the time the second segment aired there was incontrovertible proof that this indeed had been a scam and they had been taken in. The people who did this should be shamed because their unmitigated greed caused untold misery to thousands of people.
ReplyDelete