I spent most of last week engrossed in learning about differentiated instruction; first as a learner, then as a presenter. Dr. Richard Villa came to my district to help us as we "vamp up" our efforts to meet the needs of all students in general education classrooms. He worked with high school teacher leaders on Wednesday, and I attended this day-long session with them. The following morning, two colleagues and I turned around and presented the same information (as best we could) to middle school teacher leaders, then repeated the presentation the next day to another group of teacher leaders. Although it was super challenging for us, many positives came out of it. We developed a more in-depth knowledge of the content, honed our presentation skills, and got the chance to work with people that we hadn't yet worked with. Our presentation went well both days, but the second day was MUCH better, as we tweeked the presentation based on how the first day went.
The concept of differentiated instruction is not new, but there are implementation strategies that are. You can "retrofit" lessons to meet the needs of certain learners, or you can design lessons in advance to meet the needs of ALL learners (UDL: Universal Design for Learning). Villa proposes that the retrofit approach is a great way to get started: First, focus on one learner who is having trouble learning for one reason or another; he/she could be a special education student, an academically advanced student, an English language learning student, a student who lacks motivation, or fill in the blank . The next step is to gather information about the student's strengths and weaknesses (here is where having information about learning styles comes in handy), interests, background experiences, and personality. Next, you identify characteristics of the classroom: routines, teachers' instructional style, homework, assessment, etc. The team can usually easily identify mismatches regarding how the student learns and how he/she fits into a particular classroom on a typical day. The final step is to brainstorm ideas of possible changes that the teacher could make that could possibly help the student learn.
I found it ironic to receive an e-news brief from E-School News with the Headline "Study Questions Learning Style Research." A research study titled "Learning Styles: Concept and Evidence" was recently published in a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, called Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The study was conducted by four professors of psychology from around the country. All are cognitive psychologists with an interest in the science of learning.
The researchers reviewed all major studies that promoted effectiveness of teaching to different learning styles to see whether those studies had reached valid conclusions. They could not show conclusively that students learn better when they are taught according to their profered modality. I first assumed that they are talking about Howard Gardners multiple intelligences modalities, but upon reviewing the actual study, saw no references at all to this, although several other tools were mentioned: those on the International Learning Styles Network website (www.learningstyles.net), Kolb's Learning Style Inventory (www.haygroup.com), and others from Coffield et al. (2004). I believe that all are fee-based tools. My first reaction after reading the eSchool news article was that these researchers must have had a bad research design to find proof that providing learning activities to fit various learners is not effective. However, after looking at the study itself, I have changed my mind. I believe that the researchers do not condone spending any money on learning style inventory tools, because so far they have not made major positive differences in learning outcomes when used alone.
In fact, I think they would agree about the importance of teachers using many sources of information about students to design different kinds of learning experiences. Lecture is the most common instructional practice in American secondary classrooms, and written homework comprised of short answer questions is the most common form of homework. I doubt that the researchers would disagree that it might benefit students to "switch it up" to make it better suited for a wide range of learners.
This is part of the researcher's conclusions: "Given the capacity of humans to learn, it seems especially important to keep all avenues, options, and aspirations open for our students, our children, and ourselves. Toward that end, we think the primary focus should be on identifying and introducing the experiences, activities, and challenges that enhance everybody’s learning." This conclusion fits with what I've learned recently about differentiated instruction and universal design for learning. Learning style preferences is just one type of information that might be helpful to a teacher when identifying a student's strengths, and you don't need to spend money on fancy learning style inventories.
Here's another example of why it is important to look at a primary source document (the actual research study) instead of relying solely on the opinions of a secondary source (eSchool News). In my eyes, eSchool News made some assumptions that were not justified when looking at the actual study. Too bad eSchool news has disabled comments for this article.
Added 1/12/10: I received an email from the editor of eSchool News, Dennis Pierce, who had read my blog post. He mentioned that the eSchool News content management system was being updated and that comments are now allowed, so be sure to add a comment there if you'd like.
The tagline "Scientists have yet to prove that students learn better when taught according to their preferred modality, a new study suggests" doesn't fit the content of the article. However, I suppose it does generate interest and cause people to click on the link, so in that regard it works. I do worry that people who only read the beginning of the article will conclude that it is not a good idea to include student learning style preferences along with all the other types of information (prior knowledge, interests, experiences, etc) about students when designing lessons.
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