Andrew Old describes the issues around 'Learning Styles'

[debbie]

Periodically, there's a 'twitter storm' about the VAK Learning Styles theory.

Andrew Old describes this in his 'Teaching Battleground' blog:

https://teachingbattleground.wordpress. ... rike-back/

Learning Styles Strike Back

November 30, 2015

One of the few signs of progress in changing the debate in education had been a concerted rejection of the most obviously pseudo-scientific parts of the education climate, namely Brain Gym and learning styles. The greater involvement of cognitive psychologists in education, (e.g. Dweck and Willingham), challenges from outside education (e.g. Goldacre) , the creation of ResearchED and the opening up of debate on social media had helped create a climate where these most obvious frauds could not hope to flourish. Even those conducting and promoting rotten research would use opposition to learning styles and Brain Gym to signal that they were not complete charlatans.

I wish research-attentive folk would get just as passionate about challenging the continued practice and promotion of 'multi-cueing reading strategies' which amount to teaching children to guess words when reading new texts.

Even in England where Systematic Synthetic Phonics is now statutory and heavily promoted as 'official' guidance, it is evident that 'multi-cueing reading strategies' and the 'Reading Recovery' programme and approach still prevail.

This really does need attention - and 'Reading Recovery' is still entrenched at the Institute of Education.

We can also see from under-graduate articles that mixed methods is still being promoted through various universities as is evident through their published articles. I drew attention to continued misunderstanding here:

http://phonicsinternational.com/forum/v ... .php?t=952

[debbie]

There are a lot of similarities in the debate about 'Learning Styles' and 'multi-cueing reading strategies'.

With the 'Learning Styles' theory, learners with 'different learning styles or preferences' are expected to be identified and catered for in teachers' planning and provision from the outset. This could lead to enormously time-consuming and unnecessary complications for planning and provision - and also to inappropriate provision for the subject and context.

So, 'individualism' is driving the theory of teaching provision.

One counter for this theory is that the rationale for provision should be based on what's fit-for-purpose for the subject and the context - and that all, or various, learners' 'senses', as appropriate, are involved with learning rather than some learners should be taught via 'sight' and others via 'audio' - and yet others via 'kinaesthetic' activities.

With reading instruction, many teachers argue that 'children have different learning styles' and that 'phonics doesn't suit every child' - and this gives them the belief that phonics teaching is not suitable for all children. This worryingly diminishes the central importance of explicit and rigorous phonics teaching for ALL learners and it clearly illustrates that teachers do not share a common understanding of the most important and effective way of teaching reading (and spelling of course).

In other words, many teachers have been led to believe that the INDIVIDUALISM of the learner is the driving force of what we teach and how we teach it - for reading instruction and regardless of subject.

This is a deeply-held, and widely-promoted notion in teacher-training and continuing professional development.

This is not to say, however, that we do not do our best as teachers to understand learners as individuals and do our best to understand what obstacles there could be to their learning - of course teachers may need to increase or modify their provision appropriately.

But there is a difference between initial planning and provision for teaching, informed by good research (and common sense and experience I have to add) and analysing what needs to be modified for individuals appropriately - which would not, for example, be rejection of phonics 'for some children'.

[debbie]

It's not that bloggers never pay attention to worries about research on Reading Recovery, they do - and here 'Horatio Speaks' and 'Greg Ashman' have played their part:

http://www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22

Also, David Didau and Andrew Old have also written about the reading debate, in fact I've already flagged up Andrew Old's quite famous blog postings about what he refers to as 'phonics denialists' - for example, here:

https://teachingbattleground.wordpress. ... scredited/

[debbie]

Blogger, Greg Ashman, writes about 'Learning Styles':


https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2015/1 ... ont-exist/

Why I’m happy to say that learning styles don’t exist

November 30, 2015

There is a curious constituency out there who are desperate to make the case for learning styles, despite all of the evidence that we now have. Some recognise the issues with the way learning styles have been implemented and yet still wish to keep them from the grave. We read that there might be something in it, somewhere; it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry.

This is a moral issue. Teacher workload is increased when managers pursue learning styles and we are all aware of the recruitment and retention problems affecting teaching. It is simply wrong to require teachers to fill-in boxes on lesson plans when it’s clear that there is no proven value in doing so. And yet this is an inevitable result of learning styles theories being undead. Just look at the responses to Tom Bennett’s recent tweets. The Zombie is out there and it is consuming the flesh of good, honest teachers. It is up to those of us with knowledge and a bit of a platform to try our best to kill it off.

Learning styles also risk labelling and stereotyping students; possibly the most dangerous part of the whole concept. As Coffield et. al. explain: