Engaging Students and Their Styles of Learning

Even though it has been nearly a decade since I've been out of the classroom and (thankfully!) out of the principal's office, whenever Labor Day rolls around my thoughts still return to Back to School. Of course, with the constant pressure of just about every retailer beginning their back-to-school-sales as soon as they have cleared the 4th of July merchandise, whose thoughts don't? New binders and pencils aside, the ruminations in my work world tend toward how teachers can hone any edges of their craft that may have dulled over the summer.

For many educators, late August means staff in-service days. Translation: hour after hour of everything from the new grading system to a refresher course on blood-born pathogens. Those instructions and meetings have their place, there's no doubt, but most schools still try to work in some sort of professional practice development. This may come in the form of guest speaker or training to use some tools. This may even be a series of readings.

One such series that has focused my attention is an emerging debate on learning styles. Last week, The NY Times ran a piece entitle, Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits. The central contention was from a piece of research, Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. The Times' piece focuses a lot of attention on the well-worn idea that students have their own learning styles; visual learners, auditory learners, etc.

The UCSD study concluded:

Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education...We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice.

 

A stunning conclusion! Of course, the response should not be to throw out any appeal to teaching with learning styles in mind as the research only contends that there is no evidence to support learning-styles.

In my own experience, I would have to say that I concur with the UCSD researchers, with one caveat. That is, I tended to find that most high school students have one of two learning styles: engaged or not-engaged. For engaged learners (whether in my remedial 9th grade English class or A.P. European History) the style of instruction, whether tailored for visual learners (a movie), tactile (a hands-on simulation), or auditory (a lecture), did not matter. They tended to be engaged because they were inspired to learn. So, for me, the real question to investigate is: how can educators best inspire students to be engaged learners?