Dive Brief:
- The concept of learning styles — or the idea that someone may, for example, learn better through seeing something as opposed to hearing it — is an approach now thought of as a myth. Instead, experts suggest that educators should consider how to plan lessons to better engage and interest students.
- Students learn from a variety of methods, so even if research provides evidence that one kind of approach works, that doesn’t mean it’s the only approach, said Diana Turk, chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning and director of teacher education at the New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
- “For example, while research shows that children benefit from opportunities to move their bodies while learning and that experiential activities help engage more learners, this does not mean that these kids are ‘kinesthetic learners,’ nor that they cannot learn through reading or writing or listening,” Turk said.
Dive Insight:
Instead of focusing on a single style of learning, Turk advocates for teachers to follow a universal design for learning approach. She said this provides students with several different ways of obtaining material no matter the mode employed.
“This allows students to access the same lesson in a variety of ways, allowing students of different reading levels, for example, to gain access to information through engaging with it through different kinds of material, all designed to teach toward the same objectives,” said Turk.
UDL also allows students to gain access to material if they’re at different reading and comprehension levels of the material, and it considers students who may have diagnosed or undiagnosed learning disabilities, said Turk.
Additionally, she said, while a student may be able to grasp material better because they can read slides a teacher shares, that doesn’t mean they should be pegged as a “linguistic learner” and only be able to learn through this method. Instead, it should be one of several options students can use when they’re digesting material and showing what they’ve learned.
“It's important for teachers not to pigeonhole students but instead to be intentional and flexible in providing them with multiple ways to access content, different kinds of materials to learn from, different ways of engaging with the materials to build their understanding, and different means of showing their learning and demonstrating their growing understanding of a given topic,” Turk said.
