Do kids really have different learning styles? I’m predisposed to say yes, because I have a kid who has a mis-wired brain, but I always have to keep in mind that my kid is an outlier. Statistically, looking all the millions of kids out there, do some kids have different learning styles? Well, there are no large scale statistical studies that show that some kids learn better one way and others learn better another.
The real problem is teachers spend a lot of time differentiating instruction, because that’s what they learned at their education school.
“I think it’s because they’re taught this in the education schools,” said Dr. Pashler. Many masters’ programs in education “are really not very evidence-based,” he argued. “A lot of education-school faculty are really not examining outcome literature before they make recommendations.”
Education schools aren’t providing instruction to future-teachers that are based on sound research. Later, teachers are expected to constantly rework their lesson plans, based on the latest education fad. Teachers get discouraged.
Apt. 11d 
Seriously, what’s the evidence for saying evidence based practices aren’t being taught in education schools? I don’t know enough about education schools to say one way or the other, but I wouldn’t have thought a lack of differentiation (which isn’t usually based on learning styles, in practice, but on people, the teacher and the student, anyway) was a particular problem in schools.
I don’t believe learning styles should play an important role in education (I like Daniel Willingham’s review of the literature for the layperson: http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html). But, I do believe in teaching real people, and not statistical people.
Unlike one of the experts cited, I do believe in evidence based examination of the science of learning, but, I also believe that teachers need to treat the individual case, especially in the developmentally labile period of elementary education.
A quote from Willingham “Not at all. Teachers use their experience to differentiate instruction: for example, knowing that saying “good job” will motivate one child, but embarrass another . . . You don’t have to believe in learning styles theories to appreciate differences among kids, to hold an egalitarian attitude in the midst of such differences, and to try to foster such attitudes in students. .”
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PS: In my hands, the timeout problem of commenting seems to happen a lot faster than 10 minutes.
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K. I’ll bother my server company again.
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Testing comment for timeout problem.
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