learning-styles

Second, the model encourages teachers to respect
difference, instead of regarding students who fail
to learn as ‘stupid’ or ‘difficult’. In contrast to an
educational culture in the UK that labels learners
as either of ‘low’ or ‘high’ ability, the model encourages
teachers to reject negative judgements about learners
and to see them as able to learn in different ways,
providing that the methods of teaching change. The
approach encourages learners and teachers to believe
that it does not matter how people learn as long as
they do learn.
Third, the model has support among practitioners
and encourages a range of teaching and assessment
techniques, as well as flexibility and imagination
in designing resources and in changing environmental
conditions. It suggests to teachers that many
of their teaching problems will diminish if they change
their focus and begin to respond more sensitively
to the different learning preferences of their students.
The model pressurises teachers to re-examine their
own learning and teaching styles and to consider the
possibility that they are appropriate for a minority
of students, but seriously inappropriate for a majority.
Fourth, the model encourages teachers and students
to talk about learning and gives them a language
(eg kinaesthetic) which may legitimise behaviour,
such as moving about the room, that was previously
stigmatised as disruptive.
Despite these strengths, our evaluation highlights
serious concerns about the model, its application
and the quality of the answers it purports to offer about
how to improve learning. First, the model is based
on the idea that preferences are relatively fixed and,
in the case of some elements, constitutionally based.
Our continuum of learning styles (see Figure 4)
shows that other models are not based on fixed traits,
but instead on approaches and strategies that are
context-specific, fluid and amenable to change.
Moreover, references to brain research, time-of-day
and modality preferences in the Dunn and Dunn model
are often at the level of popular assertion and not
supported by scientific evidence.
Second, a view that preferences are fixed or typical
of certain groups may lead to labelling and generalising
in the literature that supports the model (eg Dunn
2003c). In addition, a belief that people should work
with their strong preferences and avoid their weak
ones suggests that learners work with a comforting
profile of existing preferences matched to instruction.
This is likely to lead to self-limiting behaviour and beliefs
rather than openness to new styles and preferences.
Although the model offers a language about learning,
it is a restricted one.
Furthermore, despite claims for the benefits
of ‘matching’, it is not clear whether matching is
desirable in subjects where learners need to develop
new or complex preferences or different types
of learning style altogether. Supporters of the model
make the general claim that working with preferences
is necessary at the beginning of something new
or difficult, but this is unlikely to be true of all subjects
or levels. Nor does this assertion take account
of a need to develop new preferences once one is
familiar with a subject. A preoccupation with matching
learning and teaching styles could also divert teachers
from developing their own and students’ subject skills.
The amount of contact time between teachers and
students is increasingly limited and the curricula
of many post-16 qualifications in the UK system are
becoming more prescriptive. Time and energy spent
organising teaching and learning around preferences
is likely to take time away from developing students’
knowledge of different subjects.
The individualisation of matching in the model
could also detract from what learners have in
common or discourage teachers from challenging
learners to work differently and to remedy weaknesses.
Although the model fits well with growing interest
in individualisation in the UK system as ‘good practice’,
our review of this issue in Coffield et al. (2004,
Section 4), suggests that ideas about matching
individual learning needs and styles tend to be
treated simplistically by policy-makers, inspectors
and practitioners.
Third, supporters claim that a self-report measure
is ‘objective’. We have to ask how far objective
measurement is possible when many learners
have limited self-awareness of their behaviour
and attitudes in learning situations. This fact may
help to explain why it is so difficult to devise reliable
self-report instruments.
A further difficulty is that a large number of the studies
examined for this review evaluated only one preference
in a test or short intervention. For this reason, there
is a need for longitudinal evaluation (lasting for months
rather than days or weeks) of the reliability and validity
of students’ preferences, both within and outside
learning style interventions. Since supporters claim
reliability and validity to promote its widespread use
as a scientifically robust model, evaluation should
be carried out by external, independent researchers
who have no interest in promoting it.