Are you a visual learner? Sorry, there is no such thing.
There is a widespread belief that each individual has a preferred learning style and learns better if instruction is tuned to that particular learning style. Boser (2019) found that 97% of the teachers and educators surveyed bought into this learning styles myth.
Most systematic reviews of the published research find little or no empirical evidence to support the belief that if you present instruction geared to a student’s learning style you improve their learning (Coffield, Moseley, Hall, & Ecclestone, 2004; Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, & Bjork, 2009; Willingham, Hughes, & Dobolyi, 2015).
Without deeply researching all the citations and meta-studies myself, I see scientific consensus there. I see no reason to distrust Klein.
Resolves YES if I still consider this the scientific consensus end of this year.
Resolves NO if I someone convinces me otherwise (e.g. Gary Klein omitted relevant stuff). Also, resolves NO if newer evidence comes up. However, a single study claiming otherwise is certainly not sufficient. Neither is a single scientist disagreeing.
This is inherently subjective. To quantify it a little further: There was a poll in 2012 which concluded: 83% of scientists in the field believe P≠NP. If someone can provide comparable evidence that less than 80% of psychologists would agree with Gary Klein here, I'll concede that there is no consensus and resolve NO.
I will not trade anymore.
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I think this should resolve NO. Gary Klein cites, for example, The Scientific Status of Learning Styles Theories, Willingham, Hughes, & Dobolyi, 2015. But that paper does not say that individuals do not have preferred learning styles. It says:
There is an underlying challenge to conducting research on
learning styles: It is impossible to prove that something does
not exist. However unpromising the data today, a new experi-
mental paradigm may eventually reveal that the theory was
right all along. Still, given our focus on educational application,
we set a different standard. We don’t insist that the theory be
proven definitively wrong. We are interested in classroom
practice, and before a theory is permitted to influence class-
room practice, there should be an evidence that the theory is
correct. In fact, we need more. We not only need to know that
learning styles exist but also need to know that teaching to
learning styles benefits students in some way
Gary Klein is citing paper saying "there is insufficient evidence in favor of X" and claiming that it really says "X is false". This is a common malpractice in discussions of research. It's still malpractice. Compare "there is no evidence for airborne spread of Covid-19" vs "Covid-19 does not spread through the air".
Further, the paper has a very narrow definition of "learning styles" that does not match lay usage.
As noted earlier, most research-
ers agree that ability is multifaceted and that people vary in
these abilities. From there, it is a short step to the idea that
weakness in one ability can be supplemented with strength in
another—for example, that a student having difficulty in math
might benefit from a lesson plan that played to his strength in
music.
...
If one
could learn material equally well in two different ways, and
if those different ways match differences in human ability, then
recoding for individual students would not only be possible but
also be effective. Indeed, there are some limited data indicating
that people who believe they are better with mental images (or
better with words) do such recoding on their own (e.g.,
Kraemer, Rosenberg, & Thompson-Schill, 2009) and that this
recoding can benefit performance (e.g., Thomas & McKay,
2010). This is not an instance of learning styles, rather, it is
an instance of ability appearing as a style.
My restatement and summary of this part of the paper: there are people who are good with images ("shape rotators"), and there are people who are good with words ("wordcels"). Shape rotators learn better with images and can "recode" what they learn via images to improve their ability with words. Wordcels learn better with words and can "recode" their word-based learning to improve their ability with images.
Yeah, I'd call that a learning style. The fact that it is downstream of ability is completely irrelevant to the project of teaching people things. Educators know this which is why they believe in learning styles. They don't need to know why it works.
The paper ends with a description of some teaching advice that has a better evidential basis, and the one they end with is:
In reading, phonics instruction benefits most children (Reynolds, Wheldall, & Madelaine, 2011).
Some children don't benefit from phonics, the auditory approach to learning to read, the visual task. I wonder how those children might differ from those who do.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278666610_The_Scientific_Status_of_Learning_Styles_Theories
@MartinRandall Thank you very much for this comment! Sent you M100 as appreciation.
My understanding of that paper: Learning styles might or might not exist, they don't matter in practice.
While it does indeed weaken my confidence, I would still say "there is no preferred learning style" holds. The main practical point of the paper seems to be:
More broadly, the history of psychology shows very limited
success in finding any useful categorization scheme for stu-
dents. By far, the most successful type of categorization is one
that is already painfully obvious to educators: Differences in
prior knowledge and ability ought to be respected (Cronbach
& Snow, 1977).
Thus, educators should not use the model of "learning styles" but instead "prior ability". That might result in the same method often or even be called "learning style".
The poll to scientists should probably ask: "learning styles" or "no learning styles" what should the masses believe? Of course, they will complain that it is more complicated in reality. Still, if we are forced to simplify it down to that, which one would be more correct? The authors of this paper seem to argue in favor "no learning style" to me.
We suggest that educators’ time and energy are better spent on other theories that might aid instruction.
@marketwise If a student has higher "prior ability" in spatial reasoning skills then it's almost certainly because they were better at learning spatial reasoning. These things are very highly correlated, almost by definition.
"Weight might or might not exist, it doesn't matter in practice, what matters is mass."
We certainly lack any evidence to say that the "painfully obvious" success of categorizing by ability is due to current ability and not to learning ability. I would bet that learning ability is a better predictor than current ability, but that's purely on instincts.
If "learning styles" is just another way of drawing attention to the success of categorizing by ability, great! Lean into that.
@Panfilo Ok, not trading after my initial bet now makes sense. What do you mean by ranked?
@marketwise It was intended as an AND statement. A person saying this is ultimately subjective, AND I bet on it, AND it counts for leagues makes it difficult for me to put a lot of effort in to convince them to sabotage themself.
@Panfilo I never really looked into the league mechanics. Assigning the non-predictive tag, was how to make it unranked? It is called nonpredictive-profits now apparently. The question details still shows "in leagues" enabled and I cannot change it. I don't know what to do now.