Daniel Willingham offers a very light response to blog criticisms of his attack on learning styles. "One can never prove a negative," he writes. "Learning styles might exist. So might the Loch Ness monster and the Yeti." Of course this is not true. You can prove negatives: no number less than zero is greater than four; no person currently in New York City is currently in France; there are no dogs in my living room. In response to another criticism, he writes, "Shouldn't it be obvious whether or not people have learning styles?" My response: yes. They do. That's why you don't teach blind people with printed text. Finally, he says, "If you can't write down on a piece of paper, 'under conditions X with person Y, Z ought to happen,' it's not a scientific theory it [learning styles] is not a scientific theory." Fair enough. But you don't use an MRI to recommend bloodletting strategies, and you shouldn't use learning styles to recommend direct instruction strategies.
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