That’s the message from this new study:
“We were startled to find that there is so much research published on learning styles, but that so little of the research used experimental designs that had the potential to provide decisive evidence,” says Harold E. Pashler, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego and the paper’s lead author.
“Lots of people are selling tests and programs for customizing education that completely lack the kind of experimental evidence that you would expect for a drug,” Mr. Pashler says. “Now maybe the FDA model isn’t always appropriate for education—but that’s a conversation we need to have.”
and
Mr. Pashler’s study does not dispute the existence of learning styles. But it asserts that no one has ever proved that any particular style of instruction simultaneously helps students who have one learning style while also harming students who have a different learning style.
Of the hundreds of research papers that have been published on learning styles, Mr. Pashler says, almost none have randomly assigned students into one classroom type or another. Only that kind of experiment, he says, can suggest anything definitive about causation. And the few studies that have used an adequate research design, he adds, have mostly failed to support the hypothesis that teaching styles should match students’ learning styles.
Wow! Is nothing sacred?
Perhaps what’s proven is that “theories”, the theories that make careers and sell books and programs, and the theories that linger like swamp miasma over ed schools have little to do with classroom realities and the hard, ordinary, and valuable work of teaching.
Maybe?