Janet Clarey revisits some of the literature arguing against the use of learning style testing. Additionally, she links to Peter Smith, who repeats the dictum that comntent should determine the method of study. "For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education describes how learning about the structure of molecules is better for most students (independent of learning styles) by building ball-and-stick models." The paper behind this recent spate of commentary is blocked behind a paywall, preventing an effective assessment of the research.
There is a detailed abstract, however, which reiterates that "any credible validation of learning-styles-based instruction requires robust documentation of a very particular type of experimental finding." It is here, of course, where the real work is being done - the experimental results are an afterthought, an unsurprising consequence of a very specific procedure intended to produced them. If your idea of education is to blast content and students and then have them repeat it back to you, then yeah, learning styles won't make much of a difference. But education and learning are rather more subtle, and we should resist demands for blunt-instrument types of validation.
There is a detailed abstract, however, which reiterates that "any credible validation of learning-styles-based instruction requires robust documentation of a very particular type of experimental finding." It is here, of course, where the real work is being done - the experimental results are an afterthought, an unsurprising consequence of a very specific procedure intended to produced them. If your idea of education is to blast content and students and then have them repeat it back to you, then yeah, learning styles won't make much of a difference. But education and learning are rather more subtle, and we should resist demands for blunt-instrument types of validation.
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