JA WestenbergThings that are fake:
- Alpha males (debunked by the original researcher)
- MSG causing headaches (never replicated)
- Learning styles (no evidence)
Things that are real:
- People will believe anything if it confirms their priors
Chaucerburnt@Daojoan poor David Mech, doomed to spend his life trying to debunk his own book
Peter Goulborn@Daojoan I knew it!
Romeu Moura@Daojoan yeah it confirms my priors that people do do that
Panicky_Patzer@Daojoan I still hear fellow teachers peddling learning styles nonsense. It just won't die.
Abram Kedge🏴🇨🇦@panicky_patzer @Daojoan I don't get it... I learn with better retention by reading and making notes, other people prefer to hear the course content. How is that not different learning styles in action? Am I misunderstanding the assertion?
@AbramKedge @Daojoan People have their preferences, sure, but there is no evidence that catering to those preferences leads to improved learning outcomes.
@panicky_patzer @Daojoan I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. Mind you, I'm speaking as someone who finds pair-programming painfully uncomfortable and counterproductive, whereas many people swear that it is the best methodology ever. Different people are... different.
@AbramKedge @Daojoan You're perfectly welcome to disagree, but your anecdotal evidence doesn't really sway the argument much for me. Sorry.
Pablo Martínez@AbramKedge @panicky_patzer @Daojoan I don't think pair programming is a good example, as you are trying to achieve something rather than trying to learn something. Pair programming can be akin to the "rubber duck" technique. I am inclined to say that if programming with someone is anoying to you, it may make it difficult for you to learn. I learn nothing if all I can think about is how badly I want out of the situation, no matter the "learning style".
@pablo_martan @panicky_patzer @Daojoan I agree in part; having mentioned the reading vs listening difference earlier, I was highlighting that there is no One True Way for any intellectual processing. For me it wasn't annoyance at my partner, it was losing the freedom to take time to think, or to investigate deeper into the code rather than skimming the top.
I feel I was let down by my senior school (highschool equivalent), getting mediocre grades. Later I studied in the Open University, a combination of home study and weekly tutorials, getting high 90s marks for coursework and exams.
I later taught a few hundred three and four day system design courses around the world for engineers and university professors learning to use ARM processors.
Teaching methods do have an impact on learning success rates.
@AbramKedge @pablo_martan @Daojoan I understand there are factors that affect your ability to learn, and they are too numerous to list, but there's no evidence that supports that teaching to someone's preferred learning style is worth the time it takes to tailor lessons to each student's style. There's really no evidence that these styles exist at all, except in one's imagination.
In fact, I've found them limiting for students who believe they can't learn if a lesson doesn't fit their "style."
@panicky_patzer @pablo_martan @Daojoan very good points.
Edit: perhaps the take away is to ensure that course material uses multiple techniques, exposing students to different information sources and media, to maximize engagement.
Individual tailoring would be an absurd extreme. You have more than enough to do as an educator as it is.
@AbramKedge @panicky_patzer @Daojoan I think I agree in part, and I most certainly agree that the richer the resources, the more enjoyable (and more probably succesful) the learning experience.
Bookscheckemout@Daojoan if we’re going by replication of studies, you could add a ton of things to this list.
👁Pooka🫣Boo🫵
Guy_VO
Arnim Sommer 🇪🇺@Daojoan
What? No not-production-ready males?😱
What? No not-production-ready males?😱
@Daojoan I'm not sure I follow the third one. Do you just mean that the commonly described types of learning styles are not reflective of reality? Because "people learn differently and have different results when they are presented with information in a way which best suits them" certainly matches my lived experience.
Matt Godden@Amoshias Learning Styles is a term of art within education as a profession, that is a little more technical than what people find more fun as a way to learn. One person may *like* learning from videos, rather than reading a textbook, but when it's tested under controlled conditions, Learning Styles as a methodology doesn't produce better outcomes, and carries negative overheads in terms of teacher workloads for lesson prep. (1/2)
The only variables that make a consistent measurable difference in educational outcomes are classroom discipline, and students per teacher. No other factor has any measurable effect outside the error bars. (2/2)
@metaning any sources? I'd love to read some, altough I'm already convinced.
@pablo_martan Nothing to hand, but it's readily available. There's a competing methodology to Learning Styles I read about a few years back, "multisourcing" or "multiheading" or similar, which focusses IIRC on deploying content in multiple reinforcing formats to all students at once, as distinct from LS's premise that each student responds to a specific format of material.
Like psychology, I suspect edu theory is going to turn out to have a lot of very bad, experimentally invalid research.
@metaning I'll look it up, thank you very much! I agree abput evidence. I think it's due to both being fileds where it's very difficult to come uo with solid theories, and which are prone to researcher bias.
arcadus (fuckaas edition)
Chris Espinosa@Daojoan Birth order theory
~n
petez
Nemo@Daojoan
I think there's a nuance with the learning style: some people like receiving information in different styles.
It just turns out this has no effect on whether they retain the information.
And that back in the real world of teaching, various bits of information are more readily expressed in different ways.
David J. Atkinson@Daojoan Absence of proof is not proof of absence. The most you can say (logically) is that the answer to your question (e.g., does MSG cause headaches) is “unknown.”