Sunday, May 22, 2016
Educational myths
The most surprising educational myth to me was the “Are your students engaged? Don't be so sure”. I know that the basic ways to tell if your students are paying attention in class is by their focus, their test scores, and if they are participating, but this article basically threw that all to the wind and said guess again. I didn't like that they just destroyed what we think we knew and then didn't offer credible solutions or ideas on how to know if students are actually engaged. The one that I immediately dismissed was the article about debunking learning styles. I read it and was irritated that the article was so one sided. I know what it's like to be student and I know for a fact which learning styles work best for me and which don't. Even at GVSU they teach us about learning styles and adapting lessons to fit all of our learners. I absolutely disagree with article 100%, just because there is no evidence (according to them) that supports different learning styles doesn't mean they don't exist. My take away from reading all of the articles is that you really can't always trust what you read or what your told. If you feel like something is working or will work for students DO IT. If the administration was trying to force me into teaching a specific way, I would try it, but keep a detailed record of students learning and show them the evidence if it's not working. At the end of the day I want my students to succeed and be successful and I am going to teach them in the way that best accommodates their learning.
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Keep in mind that the problem is with typing students (e.g., "I'm a visual learner."), not with presenting and demonstrating knowledge in multiple ways (a key principle of UDL, which we're discussing next week).
ReplyDeleteThe research is pretty clear: if you categorize students into learning styles, give them lessons based on that categorization, they do NOT learn better. You've probably never done that test on yourself (nor could you, really, since you've stated your own internal bias...large scale psych experiments are set up to avoid this).
My major point in this exercise is this: if you spend time "typing" students by learning styles, and giving them tasks/instruction based on that type, you could invest that time into other evidence-based methods that really work.