learning-styles

LSRC reference Section 8
page 128/129
Others seek to disparage the achievements of research
into learning styles by belittling what they call the rather
simple conclusions which emanate from the increasingly
elaborate statistical treatment of the test scores. Their
argument can be summarised and presented as follows:
For more than 40 years, hundreds of thousands
of students, managers and employees have filled
in learning style inventories, their scores have been
subjected to factor analyses of increasing complexity,
numerous learning styles have been identified, and
what are the conclusions that stem from such intensive
labour? We are informed that the same teaching
method does not work for all learners, that learners
learn in different ways and that teachers should employ
a variety of methods of teaching and assessment.
Comenius knew that and more in seventeenth century
Prague and he did not need a series of large research
grants to help him find it out.
This is, of course, high-flying hyperbole, but we leave
our readers to judge the accuracy of this assessment
after they have read the following section.
Still no pedagogy in the UK
According to Dewey (1916, 170), pedagogy is often
dismissed as futile because: ‘Nothing has brought
pedagogical theory into greater dispute than the belief
that it is identified with handing out to teachers recipes
and models to be followed in teaching’. Earlier, in 1897,
while working in the University of Chicago in a combined
department of philosophy, psychology and pedagogy,
Dewey had issued My pedagogic creed in which he
expressed his belief that ‘education must be conceived
as a continuing reconstruction of experience’ (1897, 53)
and that ‘the teacher is engaged, not simply in the
training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper
social life’ (1897, 59). Dewey’s famous essay proved
to be an inspiration to Kolb; it can also be read as
a hymn to the dignity of the teacher’s calling and to the
importance of education as ‘the fundamental method
of social progress and reform’ (1897, 57).
In the century that has passed since these stirring
words were written, it is surprising how the concept
of pedagogy has remained relatively unexplored
and untheorised in the English-speaking world. In the
1980s, Simon felt obliged to ask the very pertinent
question: ‘Why no pedagogy in England?’ According
to Simon, ‘the most striking aspect of current thinking
and discussion about education is its eclectic character,
reflecting deep confusion of thought, and of aims
and purposes, relating to learning and teaching –
to pedagogy’ (reprinted 1999, 34).
The truth is that the widespread eclecticism and
deep confusion which Simon complained of continue
to dog pedagogical practice in England and elsewhere
in the English-speaking world. As recently as 1996,
Anthea Millett, then chief executive of the Teacher
Training Agency (TTA), was making the charge that
pedagogy was ‘the last corner of the secret garden’
and continued to be neglected; but as Alexander has
pointed out, ‘her real message was not about pedagogy
at all: it was about performance management and
teachers’ need to comply with government thinking’
(2000, 542).
The history of pedagogy in the UK is bedevilled
by the fact that practitioners and researchers work
with markedly different definitions and models
of pedagogy from within the separate disciplinary
perspectives of adult education, psychology and
sociology. In addition, there are substantial differences
in the pedagogical language and theories used in
further and adult education, in higher education and
in work-based training; and there is very little interaction
between these differing approaches. In short, as Zukas
and Malcolm argue: ‘Lifelong learning pedagogies
do not, as yet, exist in the UK’ (2002, 203).
Into the theoretical and moral vacuum created by
the lack of one generally accepted theory of pedagogy
in the post-16 sector (or any other sector, for that
matter) have moved official models of pedagogy
of a particularly instrumental kind. The DfES Standards
Unit, the inspectorates and the curriculum and
awarding bodies all, in their different ways, interpret
pedagogy as the unproblematical application
of apparently neutral, value-free techniques, which they
have accorded the status of ‘best practice’, without
always making clear the evidential basis for their
claims. In such a climate, the use of learning styles
as a diagnostic assessment or as a means
of differentiating students is presented to practitioners
or student teachers as the uncomplicated equivalent
of other injunctions about what constitutes
‘best practice’, such as ‘facilitate learning in groups’
or ‘set precise targets with individual learners’.