The author isn't defending debunked "learning styles", which were popular in the 90s and 00s.<p>"Learning styles" usually refers to one of a handful of specific ways of dividing up people. E.g., as preferring visual, aural, reading/writing, or kinesthetic learning.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Neil_Fleming's_VAK/VARK_model" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Neil_Fleming's...</a><p>The body of the article acknowledges that those "learning styles" have been debunked:<p>> Briefly: the theory was that some people were inherently visual learners, while others were textual learners, among other kinds. This has been proven untrue.<p>The author is defending this idea instead:<p>> I’m talking about learners finding paths that work for them.<p>Fair enough, but recycling "learning styles" in the title is knowingly and needlessly confusing.
Here's a quick response as I have to get to a sailboat race.<p><pre><code> * Most research is limited; most test memory of pictures vs words (pictures win for most). Most educators of higher levels believe that there is more to learning than memory, but this is largely not addressed by the researchers.
* Most "learning styles" are established via questionnaire, not actually testing how people learn best
* Even the "Learning Styles is BS" crowd is starting to weasel out of the implication of their conclusion that everybody learns the same. They are saying things like "talent" and "context" etc. give differences in how people learn, not learning styles. A distinction without a difference IMHO- with the possible exception that you could argue that you are, for example, verbal for math and visual for history or something (because of context or whatever).
* I don't have a dog in the fight. I only want what's best for students, which means to learn how they learn. If they are all the same, so be it (but I would be surprised).
* More of my thoughts here: https://studyswami.com/are-learning-styles-bs/ and my conceptual take on how we should measure learning styles if we really want to research them (don't take the actual results too seriously).</code></pre>
I think I agree with the synopsis.<p>I don't follow the broad research for the debate, but have a pretty good understanding of the way I learn now that I'm in my 30s.<p>I can't listen to lectures at all. Like I just fall asleep. I also have trouble staying awake in meetings where I have to sit still and listen to others talk without being able to engage much. College lectures were torture. It's really hard to grok certain engineering classes and listen when you're spending a ton of energy also taking notes and the professor is moving too fast. I have no idea why they don't just print them ahead of time and pass them out. Who cares if students then don't show up if they can learn the material better?<p>I've found out my best way to learn is to just read the textbook chapters on my own time (no lectures) and then do the homework answering questions or writing papers with the professor available to chat if we need anything (how my master's program works). That works best for me. Audio is just not a good medium for me. I prefer podcast transcripts instead of having to listen to the hosts talk which takes a lot longer. I'm sure others are different.
As a teenager and young adult, I was an extremely good textual learner. I could gobble down book chapters and retain all of it. Then grad school happened. I had an extremely hard time reading scientific papers (where generally bad writers encode text in a crazy way for readers of that sub-field to be able to efficiently grok). Now in my 40s (and a professional scientist), I find it very hard to learn from any text. Videos and interactive conversations is my comfort zone. So I'd say Youtube is my biggest source of learning.<p>That said, I have wondered if my switch from being a great textual learner to someone unable to comprehend is due to lack of practice and my brain being lazy? I recently picked up a work of fiction from my kids' room and I was surprised at how hard it was for me to grok it (it was an old english book - Robinson Crusoe - so maybe it is the book and not me). I wish I was good at learning from all modalities again.
The issue is that "learning styles" as a phrase is overloaded. If you've read about the debunked theory of learning styles, and you hear someone use that phrase, you think they're talking about that, and they just haven't read the same article (headlines) you did. But, the phrase makes sense when used for something else: simply a description of what methodology an individual uses to study. The best solution would be for people to read critically and determine what the author intends by that phrase. I mean, that would be the solution in theory, but it's never going to happen. So, the more realistic solution is to just never use that phrase unless you're repeating that it's been debunked.
It took me _years_ to hone in my learning style- well after college. Learning to estimate (and to accept) the amount of effort it takes to truly learn a topic was freeing, in a way. Also, learning to identify when I could/should _stop_ learning became a useful skill for my day-to-day.<p>My challenge now is simply committing. It takes an incredible amount of time to be competitive in a particular skill that I instead tend to generalize my skill set rather than specialize.
If videos are bad then lectures are bad too, checkmate know-it-all professors.<p>Since everyone pulls stuff out of their ass on this topic here's my take: write things down on paper that you want to remember. Memorization is a big part of learning and physically writing with a pen enhances memorization.
The biggest difference I’ve seen in how people learn is whether they learn things top down or bottom up. I generally prefer to just have the main idea or concept explained directly to me so that’s how I try to teach people things as well. Came as a shock to me when I realized lots of people want to go the other direction, seeing lots of examples and then later arriving at the general concept themselves.
Here is a study from 2008 that seems to agree with the author’s opinion:<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Bjork-2/publication/233600402_Learning_Styles_Concepts_and_Evidence/links/5a0a0928a6fdcc2736dea17b/Learning-Styles-Concepts-and-Evidence.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Bjork-2/publicat...</a><p>From the abstract:
<i>We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number.
However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all.</i>
HN book recommendation:<p>Bad Education <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Education-Debunking-Myths/dp/033524601X" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Education-Debunking-Myths/dp/0335...</a><p>The book is split into self-contained chapters, each of which debunk a (often, still) held myth about learning and education. 'Learning styles' is one of these, but others include setting and streaming classes by <i>ability</i>, the effects of 'good' schools. Each chapter is by a different author summarising academically (references) but accessibly a different 'debunk' topic.<p>UK-centric, but 'lessons' global. The main negative is the unescapable need for some of the chapter editors to air political grievances over the past, though these are mainly about sore wounds over party politics not pedagogy and easily identified. A take-away being shoddy <i>science</i> is used a lot to justify pre-held biases and 'common sense'.
How/why are learning styles (as in visual, audio, kinesthetic) "debunked?"<p>I definitely learn better by seeing and reading than hearing things, I've never been able to pay attention in lectures or remember speech but I remember stuff written down. If "learning styles are debunked", what else is going on?<p>I'm sure people don't cleanly fit into one category (e.g. I may learn fine kinethetically as well, and I'm sure some people learn just as well visually as they do auditorally). Maybe everyone is actually a visual/kinethetic learner and teaching via speech just sucks.<p>But psychology is a soft science, and "learning styles are debunked" seems too broad considering many people indeed seem to learn better one way than the other.
While studying engineering I explicitly remember my classmates being weaker and stronger at different topics, and our study group would teach the thing they were strong at.<p>I had a really intuitive grasp of mechanics and dynamics and free body diagrams, others were much better than me at electrical engineering concepts, others again strong in fluid dynamics etc.<p>There’s definitely some variation in the things people are naturally able to grasp based on their past.<p>So initial exposure to a new topic for the same group of people, naturally some will take to it more easily than others.<p>I wouldn’t say it was a cut and dry as “learning styles” but some combination of the material and the way it is presented by the professor makes it digestible to varying degrees by students.
I am going to second all of the complaints about the use of “learning styles.” That has a very specific meaning in education. And there is a word for what the article is talking about: metacognition. Pretending that he has debunked a myth just feels clickbaity.
Classic encounter with an improper noun.[0]<p>I think the more substantive critique here is that when people hear “learning styles” they stop thinking and just reject the idea reflexively. To be fair, this is a reasonable defense to a scam that persuaded a lot of people historically and still has a fair bit of traction.<p>A practical response would be to work around the wordings that have baggage, not because you have to for Big Brotherish reason, but because you have empathy for the people you’re speaking to.<p>[0] <a href="https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1773806.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1773806.html</a>
Sensory Input (Visual, Auditory, Tactile) -> Conceptual Understanding (Mental) -> Practice by Repetition (Mental + Physical).<p>"Learning Styles" thinking was based on the idea that step one was the most important. However, without conceptual understanding, learning devolves to rote learning. Without practice and repetition, long-term in-depth learning is impossible.<p>As far as approaches to learning, by far the best methods involve a fair amount of one-on-one attention. The quickest way to learn something is to have it directly explained to you by another person, with questions allowed. Similarly, the best way to test your own understanding of a subject is to explain it to someone else.<p>Of course, these are the most expensive methods of education, because they require a large investment in people - skilled teachers and other staff, and parking kids in front of Youtube videos is a lot less expensive (see also computer-automated grading of homework assignments and projects). Note that societies that don't place a high value on education are doomed to stagnation at best.<p>P.S. 'Learning styles' can be very important with dyslexia or dyscalculia, e.g. listening to an audiobook while reading along in a text can help the former, as does allowing calculators for the latter for the same reason. Students without these issues can adapt to different presentation styles without much difficulty, and if their school is any good they'll have access to all kinds of supplemental resources (libraries, tutors, access to online databases etc.).<p>P.P.S "Self-taught" is possible, but realistically it takes much more time and effort. Keep in mind though that an incompetent teacher is worse than no teacher at all.
Veritasium on this topic : <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA</a><p>The most important thing in learning is to actively engage one's <i>Imagination</i> in various ways. Algebraic/Geometric mappings, Multi-level abstractions, Shifting between Abstraction and Concrete Reality, Relationship networks etc. are all needed.
There is no evidence presented in this article. At all. It has no references other than links to articles that show "learning styles" are a myth.<p>This is a problem because there is real scientific evidence showing that people do not have specific learning styles.<p>The ideas that the author proposes center around "do you want to" and "do you like". Don't you get people telling you that they prefer "kinesthetic learning" because they "like it" better? How does this differ?<p>The conversation needs to focus around *what methods are effective for learning* and *what makes them effective*. The rest is fluff, getting ready to be debunked next.<p>I disagree with the comments about "metacognition"... I agree that is critical, but I don't see any sign that this article is addressing that. Metacognition means thinking about what worked and what did not work while you were/are trying to learn. The only sign of that in this article is the one sentence, "Understand what works for you," that refers to choosing one of the wants or likes from the list.
Whenever people bang on about debunking this or that artifact of social science research (artifact of the academy to be more precise), I recall that personality can’t really be established empirically by modern psychological science. People are less willing to go around debunking personality, or say debunking free will. Some people do, especially in the “rationalist community” but generally fewer. Trusting the science is easier when it doesn’t conflict with reality, but there are a minority of people who have no trouble even when it does. In psychology especially, we should heed the adage, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” It’s difficult measuring the behavior of the human mind.
Mixing and matching methods is best, I feel. It's like ensembling models. The benefits/inefficiencies of your favorite method get counterbalanced by the benefitd/inefficiencies of your 3rd favorite method.<p>For ex, if you really like deep diving into theory, you can do that for 2 weeks, then maybe a week of practical coding. And vice versa. I feel in this way, you learn at different focal lengths (when you point the lens of your mind at the task at hand), and that helps build a more thorough learning rather than choosing your favorite focal length and staying there.
This seems to be more about working styles than learning styles. Since learning is a type of work, obviously it's still relevant, but it does mean the advice here can be more broadly applied as well.
There's exactly one comment about the learning style myth on the article this was written in response to. Not really sure the point of the article. It seems to boil down to: there are various mediums through which we learn in myriad ways to start on a learning path.
TLDR: “learning to learn” != learning styles.<p>To be more specific, I feel like there’s a strong correlation between a specific type of subject and a modality that fits- even if there’s no correlation between success and someone self selecting a given modality.<p>That feels like one of the main tasks of a good teacher. I feel that coding videos can be extremely useful for certain things. Like when introducing a new syntax it’s helpful to use the video format to point out structures and placement of syntax in real time (type definition goes here, you can also define a function like this, etc.)<p>To go back to the OP, a huge huge skill of learning is successful intuiting those modalities yourself. “I think a video would help me here”; “Here I can just read the docs to understand”
Learning takes a lot of effort. There are no shortcuts. To put effort into learning something, you need discipline and/or motivation. Biggest problem with learning for me has always been finding the motivation. When I'm motivated I'm switching between all the mentioned "learning methods". Also, the best suitable method depends on the topic too. And finally... I've always hated lectures, and have had a bad tendency to fall asleep... expect when I'm motivated and the topic is interesting!
The only way to acquire know-how is by doing. Failure and repetition are the best teachers. People are lazy and entitled and believe they should just be able to passively acquire knowledge without doing work and they blame incompatible “learning styles” for their personal failure. People also confuse “know-about” with “know-how”.
The title: myth of myth.<p>Article: myth -> strawman (learning styles are debunked replaced with (in my words) learning strategies are debunked) -> strawman “debunked”
There certainly are styles.<p>Tell my wife how to do something, she's going to do poorly. Have her watch it, she'll get it much, much better.