Tyler D’Hondt

Principles of Teaching

Sallie Rae

11 September 2019

Article Content Reflection #1

Pedagogy, among other things, is a subjective matter that is arbitrarily executed in

classrooms everywhere. Exactly how information is imparted to students and why it is done that

way is a debate that is fairly volatile. The two contenders in the debate are those who choose to

follow the learning styles path of education and those who do not, citing lack of evidence as their

reasoning. As I analyze the arguments presented to me both through the article I have chosen to

reflect on and in class, I will develop my personal take on the matter of whether teaching should

be tailored to the students’ needs or not.

To begin, the article, “Learning Styles”, by Nancy Chick is a piece written as part of a

guide for teachings. Chick is the assistant director of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt

University. She came to the same conclusion that I did: that the two groups debating either

support learning styles or do not, with those in favor being the vast majority. She begins with

describing VARK, a popular way to organize the learning styles. Visual, aural, reading/writing,

and kinesthetic are the types of students according to the VARK model. VARK classifies each

learner by the sense that they learn best with. Ranging from showing students charts and graphs

to interacting with models, the learning style approach to teaching suggests that students learn

best when information is presented in the fashion they have been categorized to specialize in

(Chick). An approach that is wildly popular these days. Chick then goes on to discuss the lack of
evidence of the popular method based on hundreds of studies conducted. Although some lacked

a proper setup, a significant number of other valid studies showed no definitive results regarding

the benefit of tailoring informational presentation to a student’s preference. That said, Chick

made the opinion of Dr. Bill Cerber known. His belief is that even though there are no definite

benefits to tailoring to a learning style, tailoring teaching style based on the content area makes

more sense. In his eyes, obviously a class on music should not be presented entirely visually

through graphic organizers, and likewise, a woodworking class should not be taught entirely

through assigning papers. In summary, Chick addressed both sides of the argument, closing with

a third opinion that is essentially a synthesis of the two conflicting ideas.

Similarly to Dr. Bill Cerber, I believe that there are not necessarily benefits to academic

performance based on adjusting teaching styles to students. I do, however, believe that

accommodating students’ learning styles improves their self worth and gives them the

confidence to do their best. Not all students put forth their best effort when in the classroom,

oftentimes because they lack the motivation to do well in school due to less than ideal home

situations, or because they simply do not like the way the information is given. That frustration

could be curbed with a small talk after class that shows the student how to translate the data in

front of the class into a more palatable form for them. I believe that learning styles and

applications of concepts like the ones we have discussed both in class and in Chapter 2 help

students, but on a smaller scale. It seems impractical to me for a teacher to try to explain every

concept in different formats to cater to each group of learners. This topic touches on Learning

Targets Two, Four, Six, and Seven. Learning Targets Four, External Social Forces, and Six,

Teaching and Learning Styles, are addressed when I talk about why the student might be
distressed in class and/or underperforming. Once the reason for the underperformance is

identified, I could show the student a way that makes class something that boosts their

confidence and comfort because they prefer the mode with which I deliver their information.

Target Two, Theory into Practice, is addressed by being able to recognize the student’s troubles

and trying to reconcile them. By using these Learning Targets and learning styles conjunctively,

an educator is better able to teach a student in whatever way fits him or her the best.

In conclusion, with my experiences in the classroom concerning learning styles, and a

conflicting lack of evidence to support that style of teaching, I will use learning styles in my

future classroom. Not for their academic application but rather for the possible benefits they

bring to the state of mind of the student. If using these techniques allows a child to believe their

academic needs are being catered to, and therefore enhances their performance, I believe that is

worth the implementation.

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu//cft/guides-sub-pages/learning-styles-preferences/

What are Learning Styles?

The term learning styles is widely used to describe how learners gather, sift through,

interpret, organize, come to conclusions about, and “store” information for further use.

As spelled out in VARK (one of the most popular learning styles inventories), these

styles are often categorized by sensory approaches: visual, aural, verbal

[reading/writing], and kinesthetic. Many of the models that don’t resemble the VARK’s

sensory focus are reminiscent of Felder and Silverman’s Index of Learning Styles, with a

continuum of descriptors for how learners process and organize information:

active-reflective, sensing-intuitive, verbal-visual, and sequential-global.

There are well over 70 different learning styles schemes (Coffield, 2004), most of

which are supported by “a thriving industry devoted to publishing learning-styles tests

and guidebooks” and “professional development workshops for teachers and

educators” (Pashler, et al., 2009, p. 105).

Despite the variation in categories, the fundamental idea behind learning styles is the

same: that each of us has a specific learning style (sometimes called a “preference”),

and we learn best when information is presented to us in this style. For example, visual

learners would learn any subject matter best if given graphically or through other kinds

of visual images, kinesthetic learners would learn more effectively if they could involve

bodily movements in the learning process, and so on. The message thus given to
instructors is that “optimal instruction requires diagnosing individuals’ learning style[s]

and tailoring instruction accordingly” (Pashler, et al., 2009, p. 105).

Caution!
Despite the popularity of learning styles and inventories such as the VARK, it’s important

to know that there is no evidence to support the idea that matching activities to one’s

learning style improves learning. It’s not simply a matter of “the absence of evidence

doesn’t mean the evidence of absence.” On the contrary, for years researchers have

tried to make this connection through hundreds of studies.

In 2009, Psychological Science in the Public Interest commissioned cognitive

psychologists Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork to evaluate

the research on learning styles to determine whether there is credible evidence to

support using learning styles in instruction. They came to a startling but clear

conclusion: “Although the literature on learning styles is enormous,” they “found

virtually no evidence” supporting the idea that “instruction is best provided in a format

that matches the preference of the learner.” Many of those studies suffered from weak

research design, rendering them far from convincing. Others with an effective

experimental design “found results that flatly contradict the popular” assumptions

about learning styles (p. 105). In sum,

“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” (p. 117).

Why Are They So Popular?

Pashler and his colleagues point to some reasons to explain why learning styles have

gained—and kept—such traction, aside from the enormous industry that supports the

concept. First, people like to identify themselves and others by “type.” Such categories

help order the social environment and offer quick ways of understanding each other.

Also, this approach appeals to the idea that learners should be recognized as “unique

individuals”—or, more precisely, that differences among students should be

acknowledged—rather than treated as a number in a crowd or a faceless class of

students (p. 107). Carried further, teaching to different learning styles suggests that “all

people have the potential to learn effectively and easily if only instruction is tailored to

their individual learning styles” (p. 107).

There may be another reason why this approach to learning styles is so widely

accepted. They very loosely resemble the concept of metacognition, or the process of

thinking about one’s thinking. For instance, having your students describe which study

strategies and conditions for their last exam worked for them and which didn’t is likely

to improve their studying on the next exam (Tanner, 2012). Integrating such
metacognitive activities into the classroom—unlike learning styles—is supported by a

wealth of research (e.g., Askell Williams, Lawson, & Murray-Harvey, 2007; Bransford,

Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Butler & Winne, 1995; Isaacson & Fujita, 2006; Nelson &

Dunlosky, 1991; Tobias & Everson, 2002).

Importantly, metacognition is focused on planning, monitoring, and evaluating any kind

of thinking about thinking and does nothing to connect one’s identity or abilities to any

singular approach to knowledge. (For more information about metacognition, see CFT

Assistant Director Cynthia Brame’s “Thinking about Metacognition” blog post, and stay

tuned for a Teaching Guide on metacognition this spring.)

Now What?
There is, however, something you can take away from these different approaches to

learning—not based on the learner, but instead on the content being learned. To

explore the persistence of the belief in learning styles, CFT Assistant Director Nancy

Chick interviewed Dr. Bill Cerbin, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for

Advancing Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and former

Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and

Learning. He points out that the differences identified by the labels “visual, auditory,

kinesthetic, and reading/writing” are more appropriately connected to the nature of the

discipline:
“There may be evidence that indicates that there are some ways to teach some

subjects that are just better than others, despite the learning styles of

individuals…. If you’re thinking about teaching sculpture, I’m not sure that long

tracts of verbal descriptions of statues or of sculptures would be a particularly

effective way for individuals to learn about works of art. Naturally, these are

physical objects and you need to take a look at them, you might even need to

handle them.” (Cerbin, 2011, 7:45-8:30)

Pashler and his colleagues agree: “An obvious point is that the optimal instructional

method is likely to vary across disciplines” (p. 116). In other words, it makes disciplinary

sense to include kinesthetic activities in sculpture and anatomy courses, reading/writing

activities in literature and history courses, visual activities in geography and engineering

courses, and auditory activities in music, foreign language, and speech courses.

Obvious or not, it aligns teaching and learning with the contours of the subject matter,

without limiting the potential abilities of the learners.