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  • My Learning Mistakes

    By Joshua Kim September 9, 2010 9:45 pm EDT

    I'm in the learning business, which makes my tendency to slip into "schoolyard folk wisdom, or empty theorizing" about learning less forgivable. Apparently, some of the things I thought I knew about how the brain learns are just wrong. Check out "Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits," by Benedict Carey for the NYTimes (9/6/10). 3 specifics that I've (falsely) incorporated into my mental map of brain learning include:

    • The importance of learning styles.
    • The importance of teaching styles.
    • The importance of a dedicated learning space.

    The article points to a recent review of the relevant learning research that found "found almost zero support" for the existence of distinct learning styles. I've been talking for years about visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners - turns out the research does not support anything I've been saying about the need to match teaching with learning styles.

    Nor has research been able to identify a particular teaching style that can reliably create authentic learning, or conversely a teaching style that works against learning. When it comes to teaching, style seems to be less important than structure and organization. Many different teaching styles can result in good learning outcomes, as long as students have the opportunity to actively work with the materials and concepts.

    The other point of the article that really sticks with me is the reporting on the research about a dedicated learning space. Turns out that studying in a different places may assist with long-term retention. As Carey puts it, "The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time……regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious…Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding. "

    I'm not surprised that I'm often and deeply wrong about learning and the brain, as I've learned enough about learning and the brain to understand what a common condition being wrong is. It is very difficult to dislodge existing beliefs and prior knowledge - even when these beliefs and knowledge fail to match any subsequent evidence.

    Part of my rationale for writing this blog is that I know that only through the act of writing what I've learned will I move this information into my long-term memory. Blogging is active learning.

    All of us involved in the learning technology need to find ways of keeping up with our evolving understanding of the brain and learning.

    How do you keep learning about the brain?

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Comments on My Learning Mistakes

  • Absence of evidence
  • Posted by Acacia , n/a at n/a on September 10, 2010 at 10:15am EDT

  • I think that Times article mislays their emphasis of the meta-analysis cited in the article, and so many people who've written about it have gotten it wrong too. The quote I'm referring to is this:

    "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."

    This quote does not mean that learning styles do not exist, but that there are methodological problems in the studies claiming the effectiveness of teaching to differing learning styles.

  • Learning Styles and Teaching Styles
  • Posted by Susan Zvacek on September 10, 2010 at 10:30am EDT

  • It's always nice to see research confirming what I already suspected: People might have different learning styles but the influence of those styles is minimal in terms of how much gets learned.

    Isn't it our job as educators to help students learn to learn in as many ways as possible? If we try to accommodate someone's alleged learning style, we're not streteching them to develop more flexibility in how they learn. I say "alleged learning style" here because there is also evidence that humans are not good at determining their own learning style(s), but we all know what we like regardless of whether it's effective or not! I've heard too many students say, "Oh, I'm a visual (auditory, etc.) learner" when they have no valid evidence on which to base that conclusion.

    As a teacher, if I present content in a variety of formats and require students to be actively engaged with that content, I'm pretty sure they'll learn, whether I know their style or not.

  • Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten
  • Posted by LTW , grad student at UW on September 10, 2010 at 4:30pm EDT

  • That is -- everything I need to know about teaching -- I learned teaching kindergarten, and pre-school and first grade. The deeper I get into education -- from teaching all the elementary, middle and high school grades, through community college, to teaching adults of all ages in the community, to university higher education, the more I am realizing that this may really be true. The educational principles and practices I learned as an undergrad getting a BS in early childhood education and subsequent related postgrad work have given me the absolute best grounding I could ask for in knowing how to engage people "where they are" and effectively take them to a new place.

    And the further I get into 'higher education', the more I'm beginning to think that as the air gets thinner up here, the more we get lost in the foggy hinterlands of our own oxygen deprivation -- on all sides. I pray that I always remember my roots.

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