Willingham on learning styles
Definition
Learning style
A supposed preferred way of taking in information, such as visual, auditory or kinaesthetic. The claim is that people learn best when teaching is matched to their preferred style.
- Willingham asks what makes teaching work, and his answers are studied alongside Dweck's work on mindsets.
- The myth of learning styles: the claim that each pupil has a preferred visual, auditory or kinaesthetic style and learns best when teaching is matched to it.
Key Idea
- Matching teaching to a pupil's preferred visual, auditory or kinaesthetic style does not raise how much they learn.
- What a pupil remembers is whatever they spent the lesson thinking about, so material should be presented in whichever form the content itself needs.
- Pupils differ in ability, interests and prior knowledge, and those are the differences a teacher can plan around.
Evidence against learning styles
- Willingham argues the claim is a myth, because no evidence shows that matching teaching to a preferred style raises how much is learnt.
- Given words and pictures to remember, so-called visual learners recall the pictures no better than anybody else does.
Common Mistake
- Willingham argues that learning styles are a myth rather than something useful.
- He accepts that preferences are real, and his claim is that teaching to them does not improve learning.
How pupils really differ
- A pupil may genuinely enjoy one way of working more than another, so preferences do exist.
- A preference is not an ability, so acting on it does not raise attainment.
- Willingham says pupils differ in ability, interests and prior knowledge, and those are the differences a teacher should plan around.
- Labelling a child a kinaesthetic learner can hold them back, because it narrows the teaching they are offered.
Example
- Learning the rivers of the UK, a map helps every pupil in the class, because the content itself is spatial.
- A poem is best heard aloud by everyone, because its rhythm and sound carry part of its meaning.
The importance of meaning
- Most school content is meaning-based, because it is made of ideas and the links between them.
- Material should therefore be presented in the form that suits the content, and that form is the same for everyone in the room.
- Willingham puts it as memory is the residue of thought, meaning you remember whatever you spend your time thinking about.
- Learning should be built around understanding meaning, because a new idea sticks only when it connects to what a pupil already knows.
Example
- Colouring in a diagram of the heart leaves you remembering the colouring.
- Explaining why blood flows one way leaves you remembering the mechanism.
The nature and nurture criticism
- Dweck and Willingham are criticised together, because both run into the same nature and nurture problem.
- Nurture: both explain achievement through experience, through the praise a child is given and the way they are taught.
- Nature: critics say that over-weights nurture, since some people achieve on innate ability.
- Neither says much about maturation of the brain, which limits what a child can learn at a given age.
- Blackwell et al.'s first study was correlational, so higher achievement could equally be what produced the mindset.
Common Mistake
- The debate here is nature and nurture, while reductionism and holism belongs to Piaget.
Strengths and limitations
- Strength: Blackwell et al. (2007) found that growth-mindset students achieved more in maths over time.
- Strength: the ideas can be acted on, since a school can change how teachers praise and can plan lessons around meaning instead of learning styles.
- Limitation: Blackwell et al. tested American students and measured achievement only in maths, so the evidence is narrower than the claims made from it.
- Limitation: many schools still hand out visual, auditory and kinaesthetic labels, despite the evidence Willingham sets against them.
Note
- The labels survive partly because pupils really do report preferences, and a preference is easy to mistake for a strength.
- Willingham's argument is about how much is learnt, so a pupil enjoying a lesson more does not count as evidence against him.
- Blackwell et al. is evidence about mindsets, and it tests nothing about learning styles.
Turning this into marks
- When both of Willingham's ideas are asked for, treat learning styles and meaning as separate points rather than one point reworded.
- Quote memory is the residue of thought, because saying pupils should understand the work does not secure the knowledge mark.
- The mark most often lost is writing that Willingham denies preferences exist, when his claim is about teaching matched to them.
- Name the nature and nurture debate when you criticise these ideas, and name Blackwell for the evidence.
Self review
- What does Willingham say about learning styles?
- In what three ways does Willingham say pupils really differ?
- What does it mean to say memory is the residue of thought?
- Which debate do criticisms of Dweck and Willingham turn on?
- Explain one way Dweck's and Willingham's ideas over-weight nurture.
