Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Do Learning Styles Exist?

Learning Styles at LIM Resources



Daniel Willingham Interview at the Psych Files

Wikipedia: Learning Styles

Crucial Thought Discussion

Lafferty and Burley: Do Learning Styles Exist?

Stephen Downes and Discussion: Do Learning Styles Exist?


Stephen Downes: Making Up Facts

Clive on Learning: Discussion on Learning Styles

2 comments:

Jim Burke said...

Gosh. . . how is it possible that I could use "exists" instead of "exist"? Arghhhhhhh!

OLAPLANTE said...

Yay! Finally, there is someone who supports my theory! I am very happy that I am not alone in my disbelief in the most essential and omnipresent of the theories in the American Education domain.
Full disclosure: I come from a different background, and we only slightly talked about learning styles, and even then it was more like a fad from the West. Another side to my background - I have always been a successful learner, as far as my learning experiences went. Granted, I disliked - and thus didn't do very well at - things that carried little meaning or subjects where the instructor was not very knowledgeable or very passionate, but in all other ways I enjoyed the very process of learning. I never thought of how I best learned - like young and healthy people don't stop to listen to their heart to check if it's working right, or chart their temperature, they are just busy doing things; I guess it's when you run into a problem, you start thinking, ok, how else can I do it? Should I graph it? What else will help me understand it? Rereading it outloud? Taking notes? Making a concept map? And then you just do it, and it clicks. I support Daniel Willingham's statement that a successful analogy is more responsible for the click than the fact that it was a visual presentation. I strongly agree that it's meaning that makes the difference.
Yet another great find by Jim Burke!