Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.Aretae: There is 1 learning style. Learn by doing. All the rest of it is crap. Do Do Do. Maybe get some help from a teacher to tell you how to DO on the first or second try. Then do, do, do some more.
90% of learning is motivation
90% of the rest is practice. (quantity & quality & relevance)
The remaining 1% includes IQ and Teaching.
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There is a difference between Skills and Knowledge.
Skills are Learnt by dooing. Knowledge is the imparting of information.
Tell me your name, and I will have forgotten it by the time I am done shaking your hand. Let me READ your name and odds are I will remember it. Other people remember stuff they are told much better than stuf they have read.
Now if you want to learn how to use a lathe, or fix an aircraft engine, or do algebra etc. then you have to do it to learn how to do it.
That's different from raw knowledge like the fact that the Battle of New Orleans was fought 2 weeks after the peace treaty was signed.
Knowledge is taught by doing too.
Often by writing. Better by using.
You know Maxwell's equations because you used them. You know Andrew Jackson because he was a useful part of an argument where you were telling someone they were stupid.
I claim that knowledge is learned by using...not by imparting. I'm a real radical.
You're utilizing the terms doing and using too broadly. It makes a difference what form that using or doing takes. Some doing looks like writing, some doing looks like listening, some looks like singing, repeating, etc.
Sure, if you want to call every approach to absorbing information doing, then you win - everyone learns in the same way, by doing. If someone is too rigid with your approach, however, they will make the doing much harder on some kids than others. And if the doing is the wrong sort, the motivation is likely to make a nosedive.
My super-short claim. Listening doesn't constitute doing. At all.
Doing is active. Listening is passive.
So if I can absorb information by listening to it - what is the doing? - the thinking about the sounds long enough to file them away for future reference?
Aretae, you're trying to cram everything into the concept of doing, and you're not making sense.
It's not incoherent, it's just my standard bombastic.
Basic rule: Watching discovery channel (listening) results in a feeling of having learned something, and a reality of (a) remembering almost nothing, and (b)being able to apply even less.
I will grant (I can hypothesize about it further) that some people in some situations can actually retain stuff they've just heard for future application. But let's talk about the other 99% of people-situation matches. For those cases...learning is doing. Listening is allowing air to flow from one ear to the other.
I have no problem with the position that motivation and doing are key.
My major disagreement is your insistence that all doing looks the same. I maintain that different learning styles is not crap and just means that the most effective style of doing may look different for different people.
Also, while we're on the topic of what I disagree with in your oversimplified learning model, natural talent is relevant and does exist. It can affect how long the doing needs to take place before competence is achieved.
BTW, how is it my children can explain to me about all sorts of concepts they've picked up from watching TV programs and "allowing air to flow from one ear to the other". Is it just that they fall into that elusive 1%?
Freedom,
The "learning styles" that I'm talking are the trope in education discussions about auditory learners, visual learners, etc. My line is that none of them learn it until they do it. Certainly true for any topic I've taught. If you're saying you might learn fractions via pizzas and I might do better learning via cooking...cool.
If you think you can learn it from a picture...I'm gonna argue that depth, retention, usability, etc, are all MUCH 3x-10x stronger by doing than by seeing, hearing, or any other option.
2. Kids are indeed fact-magnets. When interested in something, and it connects to other things they know, they absorb. Not always/often the point the show was theoretically trying to make though.
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