[Kalium]

> Skimming, that paper says there's no support for it, rather than there being evidence to falsify the idea that different people learn better in different ways.

Yes. That's the phrasing you get when researchers mean "As far as we can tell it's bullshit". Generally coupled with data that shows them looking for effects and finding zilch - which is the negative evidence you're looking for.

Do you think there's something lacking here?

[JoeAltmaier]

The part that's always deliberately ignored in these studies is, that people may have a preference for different presentations and processes. So while, if you force people (in an experimental environment) to use one techinique, and they end up learning about as well, it ignores the idea that they would have resisted learning that thing at all if it was only presented that way?

[alxlaz]

They don't, and it doesn't.

First, you'd think that, if adjusting learning styles actually made people more interested, or if it made the whole experience feel more inclusive, and make people more drawn to it, the outcomes would be better, because that's how motivation works. The fact that there is no improvement in outcome suggests that that's just not happening.

Second, though, one might convincingly object that, well, maybe it's like that if you're only measuring short-term results, but maybe in the long run it improves results, because it makes school less unfriendly, for example. But there are several studies (e.g. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0022027021014189... ) which show that it actually leads to worse results because adjusting teaching style for everything is very unproductive from a pedagogical standpoint.

The studies I'm aware of devote little time on speculating whythat's the case, but in my experience, while teaching something in a manner that does't match a person's preference can be daunting or uninteresting, teaching something in a manner that matches a person's preference but not the topic itself (e.g. it's pretty hard to teach electric motor theory without a lot of pictures) makes it even more uninteresting and dreadful.

Edit: to be clear, what these studies contradict isn't that people have preferences regarding how they learn. There's ample evidence to suggest that people like some better than others (and, obviously, if they learn all by themselves, they'll skip the ones that they don't like, or practice the ones that they like more than the ones that they don't like). What these studies convincingly contradict is the idea that adjusting teaching styles to match these preferences produces better outcomes.

[Kalium]

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that the idea of Learning Styles, which are about how effectively an individual student learns a subject depending on presentation style, ignores personal preferences of students that don't have an impact on instructional efficacy? Or that it ignores the preferences of teachers?

[JoeAltmaier]

It ignores the fact that one student will ignore the reading if not forced to do it, while another prefers the reading and completes it. Etc. So we see, in practice, different outcomes for different students depending on how the material is presented.

[Kalium]

Thank you for clarifying!

As I understand them, these studies of Learning Styles are focused entirely on pedagogical methods and their efficacy at teaching material to students. The implication, as near as I can tell, is that a student's personal preferences for how they might do things outside an instruction environment is not relevant to efficacy inside an instructional environment. You seem to be contending that a person's preferences for how to learn can and should be expected to impact the efficiency of their learning process - which sounds a lot like the Learning Styles idea!

After all, if a student might have resisted an approach in a counterfactual scenario but did learn successfully and as efficiently as a student who would not have resisted that same approach, then the same outcome is achieved in both theory and practice.

Have I missed something? Perhaps I have failed to understand your point?

[JoeAltmaier]

No I contend nothing nothing about efficiency of each process- its the choice to participate at all that can make the difference.

And I read that first link, which seems to survey teachers and their opinions, with vague questions and no hard data. Not very damning at all? Which paper was nailing which coffins? I missed it.

[Kalium]

If a choice to participate or not, based on process and style, affects the outcomes of students do you think this would show up on outcome-oriented studies? Or are you contending that this effect would only be visible in individual outcomes, and cancel out across groups of any size?

You may also wish to read the second link from the above comment. It could contain the evidence you seek! http://steinhardtapps.es.its.nyu.edu/create/courses/2174/rea...