I reviewed a paper a few months ago by John Dobson. In his
first paper, he examined whether differences exist in the learning styles
across “sex, status, and course performance.” I had some criticisms for that
paper, which you can find here, and when I came across a second paper written
by Dobson, I thought it would be interesting to see what he had to say.
As with the previous paper I reviewed by this author, he is
not examining the existence of learning styles. The assumption has been made
that they exist. His goal is to link learning styles to class performance. In
his introduction, he makes the following statement:
“…when teaching physiology to a
diverse group of students, the most thorough and successful strategy is to
present information using multiple learning styles.”
Notice the choice of words here. He does not say that the
most successful strategy is to present information via multiple sensory
modalities or in multiple ways (which there is some research to support).
Instead, the wording includes the term “learning styles.” This is a pretty
strong statement to make. Is there any evidence provided for this statement? Dobson
cites three sources in support of this statement. Let’s examine those.
The first
of the three that I could get my hands on is a paper from 2004 by Kimberly
Tanner and Deborah Allen. The paper is entirely theory and provides absolutely
no evidence supporting the above quote. There are a few parts of the paper that
theoretically address the idea of learning styles and classroom success /
teaching pedagogy, but there is no data or evidence provided in the paper. For
example, Tanner and Allen state:
“From a biological perspective, the
brain is the organ of learning, and as such, a learning style is likely to be a
complex, emergent interaction of the neurophysiology of an individual’s brain
and the unique developmental process that has shaped it through experience and
interaction with the environment. Learning style, thus, is a phenotypic characteristic
of an organism like any other. Given the plasticity of the human brain and its
propensity to learn and likely change synaptically over time, learning styles
should be considered to be flexible, not immutable- an individual’s learning
style could be actively adapted, to a certain extent, to different learning
environments.”
This is a theory- no evidence is provided that tie learning
styles to neurophysiology. In the following paragraph, Tanner and Allen
continue with “The study of human learning styles is a well-established field
within the discipline of cognitive psychology.” Considering the trouble that I
have had with finding evidence within the field of psychology (specifically the
areas of cognitive and educational psychology), I must disagree with this
statement. They go on to cite Honey and Mumford (1982), Kolb (1984), and Myers
Briggs papers (Myers-Briggs, 1980). To my knowledge, these papers are very
popular within educational psychology circles, but they are not talked about in
most cognitive psychology textbooks nor are they in any psychology book that I
could find that was specific to learning and memory (Gluck, Mercado, and Myers,
2008; Malone, 1991).
The other two sources listed are not available for free
online. They appear to be largely theoretical, but if you have access to either
of these articles and want to send them to me, I would greatly appreciate it
(Keller, J. (1987). Development and use of the ARCS model of instructional
design. J Instr Develop 10: 2-10. and
Miller JA. (1998). Enhancement of achievement and attitudes through
individualized learning style presentations of two allied health courses. J Allied Health 27: 150-156.)
Dobson found gender differences in learning style preference
(which is different than what was found last time). Both males and females
prefer visual learning the most (49% and 46% of them respectively) and
kinesthetic learning the least (5% and 4% respectively), but there appear to be
differences for the other two learning modalities. Females prefer aural to the
read/write modality (27% to 23%) and males prefer read/write to the aural
modality (29% to 17%). Although small, these differences were significant. One
must question why gender differences were found in this study and not in the other
study by this author that I reviewed previously (Dobson, 2010). Going to that
paper, they came very close to finding a significant difference between males
and females in the study. That said, their distribution of response preferences
was dramatically different than in this study (with fewer “visual learners” and
more “kinesthetic learners”). Why the substantial variation here? Are we
talking about different populations? Both of the studies by Dobson focused on
physiology students. If we are trying to classify individuals into various
types of learners, yet we cannot reliably characterize the population of
learners into subgroups, maybe these subgroups do not exist? The lack of
reliability with characterizing the populations examined is worrisome.
Students were asked about which portion of the course they
found most helpful. The vast majority of the students selected that the lecture
portion of the class was aided by the lecture instructor and by the
presentation materials. For the lab portion of the class, the most helpful
items were the lab instructor, the lab materials, and the lab manual. The lab
activities themselves were listed as most helpful by a very small minority of
students. The author claims that this low number is reflective of the very
small minority of students that prefer kinesthetic learning (only 4-5% of the
students in this class identified this way). I have to wonder just how easily a
student could differentiate the individual components of a laboratory into
which were most helpful. For example, when I took labs as an undergraduate, the
activity was crucial, but the lab instructor circled and helped students with
various portions throughout the activity. Which portion is the most helpful? It
might be difficult for students to specifically identify whether they were
helped more by the activity or by their instructor.
Looking at their data, the “lecture scores for the
kinesthetic group were significantly lower than those from the other three
groups.” In addition, the “overall course scores from the kinesthetic group
were significantly less than those from the other three groups…” The authors
discuss that this indicates that kinesthetic learners are largely ignored by
current teaching practices in physiology classes in college. If the author is
correct, increasing the kinesthetic component of a class should lead to an
increase in learning (and thus performance) with the group of “K-learners.”
However, instead, all students scored better in the laboratory portion of the
class. It could be argued that the kinesthetic group improved more than the
other three groups, and while that is true, one must wonder whether the other
three groups experienced a ceiling effect of sorts here. They are all
averaging/scoring near 90% on the laboratory portion of the class. Maybe this
is as high as those group averages can get? Nonetheless, the kinesthetic
learners were still scoring below
the other groups even when we focus on the much more kinesthetic friendly
laboratory portion of the class.
I wish that the author would have provided the F statistics
for their ANOVA- They claim to have found a significant interaction between
learning style preferences and final scores in the lecture, lab, and overall
class, but provide no statistics to back that claim. Overall, this is an interesting
paper but it does little to provide us with evidence in favor of learning
styles.
References
Dobson, J. (2009). Learning style preferences and course
performance in an undergraduate physiology class. Advances in Physiological Education, 33: 308-314.
Dobson, J. (2010). A comparison between learning style
preferences and sex, status, and course performance. Advances in
Physiological Education, 34: 197-204.
Gluck, M, Mercado, E, Myers, C. Learning and Memory: From
Brain to Behavior. 2008, Worth Publishers
Malone, JC. Theories of Learning: A Historical Approach.
1991, Wadsworth .
Tanner, K, Allen, D. (2004). Approaches to biology teaching
and learning: learning styles and the problem of instructional
selection-engaging all students in science courses. Cell Biol Educ 31: 153-157.
