learning-styles
learning-styles
learning-styles
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
LSRC reference Section 9<br />
page 136/137<br />
As a result, as Sternberg has argued: ‘the literature<br />
has failed to provide any common conceptual framework<br />
and language for researchers to communicate with<br />
each other or with psychologists at large’ (2001, 250).<br />
The previous sections of this review have provided<br />
detailed evidence of a proliferation of concepts,<br />
instruments and pedagogical strategies, together with<br />
a ‘bedlam of contradictory claims’ (Reynolds 1997, 116).<br />
The sheer number of dichotomies in the literature<br />
conveys something of the current conceptual confusion.<br />
We have, in this review, for instance, referred to:<br />
convergers versus divergers<br />
verbalisers versus imagers<br />
holists versus serialists<br />
deep versus surface <strong>learning</strong><br />
activists versus reflectors<br />
pragmatists versus theorists<br />
adaptors versus innovators<br />
assimilators versus explorers<br />
field dependent versus field independent<br />
globalists versus analysts<br />
assimilators versus accommodators<br />
imaginative versus analytic learners<br />
non-committers versus plungers<br />
common-sense versus dynamic learners<br />
concrete versus abstract learners<br />
random versus sequential learners<br />
initiators versus reasoners<br />
intuitionists versus analysts<br />
extroverts versus introverts<br />
sensing versus intuition<br />
thinking versus feeling<br />
judging versus perceiving<br />
left brainers versus right brainers<br />
meaning-directed versus undirected<br />
theorists versus humanitarians<br />
activists versus theorists<br />
pragmatists versus reflectors<br />
organisers versus innovators<br />
lefts/analytics/inductives/successive processors<br />
versus rights/globals/deductives/<br />
simultaneous processors<br />
executive, hierarchic, conservative versus legislative,<br />
anarchic, liberal.<br />
The sheer number of dichotomies betokens a serious<br />
failure of accumulated theoretical coherence and<br />
an absence of well-grounded findings, tested through<br />
replication. Or to put the point differently: there is<br />
some overlap among the concepts used, but no direct<br />
or easy comparability between approaches; there<br />
is no agreed ‘core’ technical vocabulary. The outcome –<br />
the constant generation of new approaches, each<br />
with its own language – is both bewildering and<br />
off-putting to practitioners and to other academics<br />
who do not specialise in this field.<br />
In addition, the complexity of the <strong>learning</strong> <strong>styles</strong><br />
field and the lack of an overarching synthesis<br />
of the main models, or of dialogue between the leading<br />
proponents of individual models, lead to the impression<br />
of a research area that has become fragmented,<br />
isolated and ineffective. In the last 20 years, there<br />
has been only a single use of the term ‘<strong>learning</strong> <strong>styles</strong>’<br />
and three uses of the term ‘cognitive <strong>styles</strong>’ in the<br />
Annual Review of Psychology. We have also noted that<br />
these terms are not included in the indexes in four<br />
widely used textbooks on cognitive and educational<br />
psychology. Instead, psychometric specialists speak<br />
mainly to each other about the merits or otherwise<br />
of particular instruments. Even the proponents of the<br />
more credible models, namely those offered by Allinson<br />
and Hayes (see Section 6.4) or Vermunt (Section 7.2),<br />
tend not to engage with each other’s models or those<br />
from other families.<br />
Although the theorists tend to claim routinely that<br />
all <strong>learning</strong> <strong>styles</strong> within a particular model are equally<br />
viable, the terminology that they have chosen is<br />
neither neutral nor value-free. It is clearly preferable,<br />
for instance, to use a deep rather than surface <strong>learning</strong><br />
approach, to be field independent rather than field<br />
dependent, and to exhibit the hierarchic rather than the<br />
anarchic thinking style. Yet, as our review of Entwistle’s<br />
model (Section 7.1) showed, sometimes a strategic<br />
approach is effective and students need to be able<br />
to judge when different approaches to <strong>learning</strong> are<br />
appropriate. The value judgements evident in various<br />
models need to be made more explicit if students<br />
are independently to evaluate the different approaches<br />
to <strong>learning</strong> <strong>styles</strong>.