Providing Instruction Based on Students' Learning Style Preferences Does Not Improve Learning

Is it really a neuromyth? A meta-analysis of the learning styles matching hypothesis

Learning styles have been a contentious topic in education for years. The purpose of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis of the effects of matching instruction to modality learning styles compared to unmatched instruction on learning outcomes. A systematic search of the research findings yielded 21 eligible studies with 101 effect sizes and 1,712 participants for the meta-analysis. Based on robust variance estimation, there was an overall benefit of matching instruction to learning styles, g = 0.31, SE = 0.12, 95% CI = [0.05, 0.57], p = 0.02. However, only 26% of learning outcome measures indicated matched instruction benefits for at least two styles, indicating a crossover interaction supportive of the matching hypothesis. In total, 12 studies without sufficient statistical details for the meta-analysis were also examined for an indication of a crossover effect; 25% of these studies had findings indicative of a crossover interaction. Given the time and financial expenses of implementation coupled with low study quality, the benefits of matching instruction to learning styles are interpreted as too small and too infrequent to warrant widespread adoption.

A rationale for promoting cognitive science in teacher education: Deconstructing prevailing learning myths and advancing research-based practices

PURPOSE

Cognitive science is essential to designing, implementing, and evaluating instruction for enhancing student learning. However, there may not be sufficient focus on the principles of cognitive science, as some educators hold learning beliefs that may be considered cognitive myths.

PROCEDURES

This review article analyzes examples of five learning myths (learning styles, pure discovery learning, digital natives, extrinsic motivation, multitasking) and five research-based learning strategies (dual coding, direct instruction, summarization, retrieval practice, spacing). It details the research evidence for each to explain those misconceptions of learning and also those underutilized or misunderstood but effective strategies shown to benefit student learning.

CONCLUSION

Educational practices related to learning myths are widespread in education with potentially detrimental effects on student learning. We recommend that colleges of education be restructured to ensure greater emphasis on cognitive science in educator preparation programs to better promote research-based instructional strategies to meet students' learning needs.

What Happens to the Principles of Evidence-Based Practice When Clinicians Become Educators? A Case Study of the Learning Styles Neuromyth

Introduction

The approach of matching teaching practice to individual student "Learning Styles" has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective, even harmful. Yet, it appears a majority of educators believe it to be an effective approach. The status of Learning Styles theory in health professions education is unclear.

Method

We surveyed health professions educators to determine whether they believed that Learning Styles theory is effective and whether this belief translates to action. We also test knowledge of Learning Styles theory.

Results

87.4% of participants are familiar with Learning Styles, but knowledge about specific models varies. 69.9% of participants believed that Learning Styles theory is effective, but only one-third of them were actually using it.

Discussion

More effort is required to emphasise the importance of evidence-based educational awareness and practice in the healthcare community. As is the case with clinical practice, a culture of promoting pedagogy validated by the scientific method should be the norm.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-023-01849-1.

What's the matter with ACEs? Recommendations for considering early adversity in educational contexts

BACKGROUND

Currently, some trauma-informed education practices use "ACE scores," a number that represents the sum of endorsed items from a survey derived from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study in 1998. We caution that the survey provides limited information within education, and such scores have limited utility for designing and delivering individualized intervention to support students who have experienced adversity.

OBJECTIVE

We sought to illustrate why ACEs are not well-suited for use in trauma-informed education, provide definitions for adversity-related terms from which a broader and common understanding of adversity can stem, and provide recommendations for integration of adversity-informed approaches to the educational context.

METHODS

We compiled definitions of adversity-related constructs and made recommendations based on review of relevant research from the fields of psychology and education.

RESULTS

Rather than tailoring educational practices to specific children based on the "traumatic" events they experience, we recommend educators focus their efforts on building supportive classrooms geared toward supporting students with best practices drawn from the Science of Learning, and with the understanding that early adversity can influence heterogeneous trajectories in student development and behavior. In addition, further research on educational practices, including the use of a shared language for describing and defining adversity-related experiences, are the concrete steps needed to better support a goal of adversity-informed education.

Pre-Service Teachers’ Beliefs About Neuroscience and Education—Do Freshmen and Advanced Students Differ in Their Ability to Identify Myths?

Addressing and creating awareness on the topic of neuromyths in educational sciences has increased in recent years. We know very little about how widespread the belief in neuromyths is among pre-service teacher students and whether this belief affects their subsequent approach to teaching and consequently possibly also the performance of their students. The aim of the study was to analyze students’ belief in neuromyths, focusing on differences between freshmen ( N  = 82) and advanced students ( N  = 74) studying in pre-service teacher education. Using a questionnaire approach, students had to judge whether given statements were objectively wrong (i.e., “Neuromyths”) or objectively correct (i.e., “Neurofacts”). They could also choose the option “I don’t know”. For each statement, we asked students to indicate how self-confident they were about their answer. Furthermore, students’ self-assessment of their need for cognition and ability-related academic self-concept was measured. Results reveal no significant difference between freshmen and advanced students for identifying the myths correctly, but a significant difference for identifying the facts correctly, showing that freshmen identified slightly more facts correctly than advanced students. Self-confidence plays an important role here, as we see that within the master students, students with high self-confidence values identified more facts correctly.

Prevalence of neuromyths among psychology students: small differences to pre-service teachers

Neuroscience will possibly aid the educational practice but neuromyths are prevalent worldwide. Certain misconceptions about learning, memory and the brain are prevalent in different groups and hard to dispel. Bridging the gap might be too far. However, Psychology may serve as a bridge between these distant fields. The present study examined neuromyth endorsement in psychology students. An online questionnaire based on 20 neuromyths and 20 neurofacts was used. Additionally, neuroscience exposure at university and media exposure was assessed. The sample consisted of psychology students (N = 116) in Austria and was compared to a teacher-training sample. The different groups were compared using Signal Detection Theory, Chi-square test, non-parametric correlation analyses, and independent sample t-test. No correlation between neuroscience exposure at university and leisure time for psychology students at the beginning of their studies could be found. Here, the same misconceptions were among the most prevalent-compared to the teacher-training students sample. Results show significant difference between the groups on discrimination ability and response bias. Although psychology students share the same most prevalent misconceptions, they differ significantly in their amount of agreement. The reported study reveals a better discernment ability and lower response bias on neuromyths in the Psychology students' sample. On the individual item level, they performed better at rejecting some neuromyths than pre-service teachers. In conclusion, some neuroscience and pedagogical psychology training improves the ability to discriminate between true and false statements. Therefore, directly addressing these misconceptions within the study program-Teacher Training and Psychology-could reduce neuromyth endorsement.

Unveiling teachers' beliefs on visual cognition and learning styles of deaf and hard of hearing students: A Portuguese-Swedish study

Vision is considered a privileged sensory channel for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students to learn, and, naturally, they recognize themselves as visual learners. This assumption also seems widespread among schoolteachers, which led us to analyse the intersection between teachers' beliefs on deaf and hard of hearing students' academic achievement, visual skills, attentional difficulties, and the perceived importance of image display in class. An online survey was designed to analyse the beliefs of the schoolteachers about the deaf and hard of hearing students learning in educational settings from Portugal and Sweden. Participated 133 teachers, 70 Portuguese and 63 Swedish, from the preschool to the end of mandatory education (ages 3-18) with several years of experience. The content analysis and the computed SPSS statistical significance tests reveal that surveyed teachers believe that deaf and hard of hearing students have better visual skills when compared with their hearing peers yet show divergent beliefs about visual attentional processes. Within the teachers' perceptions on learning barriers to DHH students, the distractibility and cognitive effort factors were highlighted, among communicational difficulties in class. Conclusions about the prevalence of learning misconceptions in teachers from both countries analysed, corroborate previous studies on neuromyths in education, and bring novelty to Deaf Education field. The work of translation of scientific knowledge, teacher training updating, and partnership between researchers and educators are also urgently needed in special education.

Interventions to Dispel Neuromyths in Educational Settings-A Review

Neuromyths are misconceptions about the brain and learning, for instance Tailoring instruction to students' preferred “learning styles” (e.g., visual, auditory, kinesthetic) promotes learning. Recent reviews indicate that the high prevalence of beliefs in neuromyths among educators did not decline over the past decade. Potential adverse effects of neuromyth beliefs on teaching practices prompted researchers to develop interventions to dispel these misconceptions in educational settings. This paper provides a critical review of current intervention approaches. The following questions are examined: Does neuroscience training protect against neuromyths? Are refutation-based interventions effective at dispelling neuromyths, and are corrective effects enduring in time? Why refutation-based interventions are not enough? Do reduced beliefs in neuromyths translate in the adoption of more evidence-based teaching practices? Are teacher professional development workshops and seminars on the neuroscience of learning effective at instilling neuroscience in the classroom? Challenges, issues, controversies, and research gaps in the field are highlighted, notably the so-called “backfire effect,” the social desirability bias, and the powerful intuitive thinking mode. Future directions are outlined.

A Slippery Myth: How Learning Style Beliefs Shape Reasoning about Multimodal Instruction and Related Scientific Evidence

The learning style myth is a commonly held myth that matching instruction to a student's "learning style" will result in improved learning, while providing mismatched instruction will result in suboptimal learning. The present study used a short online reasoning exercise about the efficacy of multimodal instruction to investigate the nature of learning styles beliefs. We aimed to: understand how learning style beliefs interact with beliefs about multimodal learning; characterize the potential complexity of learning style beliefs and understand how this short exercise might influence endorsements of learning styles. Many participants who believed in the learning style myth supported the efficacy of multimodal learning, and many were willing to revise their belief in the myth after the exercise. Personal experiences and worldviews were commonly cited as reasons for maintaining beliefs in learning styles. Findings reveal the complexity of learning style beliefs, and how they interact with evidence in previously undocumented ways.

The Learning Styles Neuromyth Is Still Thriving in Medical Education

Learning Styles theory promises improved academic performance based on the identification of a personal, sensory preference for informational processing. This promise is not supported by evidence, and is in contrast to our current understanding of the neuroscience of learning. Despite this lack of evidence, prior research shows that that belief in the Learning Styles “neuromyth” remains high amongst educators of all levels, around the world. This perspective article is a follow up on prior research aimed at understanding why belief in the neuromyth of Learning Styles remains so high. We evaluated current research papers from the field of health professions education, to characterize the perspective that an educator would be given, should they search for evidence on Learning Styles. As in earlier research on Higher Education, we found that the use of Learning Style frameworks persist in education research for the health professions; 91% of 112 recent research papers published on Learning Styles are based upon the premise that Learning Styles are a useful approach to education. This is in sharp contrast to the fundamental principle of evidence-based practice within these professions. Thus any educator who sought out the research evidence on Learning Styles would be given a consistent but inaccurate endorsement of the value of a teaching technique that is not evidence based, possibly then propagating the belief in Learning Styles. Here we offer perspectives from both research and student about this apparent mismatch between educational practice and clinical practice, along with recommendations and considerations for the future.

Improving Debt Literacy by 2/3 Through Four Simple Infographics Requires Numeracy and Not Focusing on Negatives of Debt

Borrowing behavior may be more resistant to formal educational treatments than other financial behaviors. In order to study the process and results of infographics-based debt education, we used eye tracking technology (SMI RED 500 Hz) to monitor the oculomotor behavior of 108 participants (68 females) aged 18 to 60 who were shown 4 infographics. The study used an experimental design with repeated measures and an internal comparison group. We also used scales of debt literacy and a set of information literacy scales: numerical, graph, and linguistic. The results confirm that short-term infographics-based debt education can improve debt literacy significantly. The difference in processing the educational contents that were not known to participants before the educational session suggests that participants with better information literacy make more considerable debt literacy progress. Specifically, we found that numerical literacy is a significant mediator of debt education results, depending on the initial level of debt literacy; this relation is moderated by the focus of visual attention on negatives of debt. We found no significant relationship between debt literacy education results and those of graph and linguistic literacy.

Integrating Business Students’ E-Learning Preferences into Knowledge Management of Universities after the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many universities to close doors and keep students completely online—a phenomenon that raised unprecedented challenges with lessons learned that should be integrated into future educational knowledge management strategies and practices. Special attention should be given to students’ learning habits. This paper presents the results of a semi-systematic literature review on the research problem and a survey of a sample of business students regarding their learning habits and preferences. Learnings of the research can be useful for the transition to an entirely online distance education, integrated in the framework of knowledge management strategies regarding e-learning in universities. The primary quantitative research was conducted before the start of the lockdown, and the results give useful insights that can be translated into mandatory elements for any strategy designed to assure a smooth and effective passage from in-class education to online teaching and learning. Students’ pre-epidemic learning habits, their use of communication tools and their preferences for solutions usable in distance education, with a special focus on gender and education level, have been investigated. Results are correlated in the paper with possible knowledge management strategies in universities as part of an approach with both academic and practical implications.

A software architecture perspective about Moodle flexibility for supporting empirical research of teaching theories

Moodle represents a great contribution to the educational world since it provides an evolving platform for Virtual Learning Management Systems (VLMS) that became a standard de facto for most of the educational institutions around the world. Through the pedagogical functions provided, it collects in the many globally spread out databases a huge amount of information regarding the activities that teachers and students perform during the learning process. This reality makes Moodle a natural choice for conducting experimental research by Artificial Intelligence researchers interested in theories for improving learning and teaching; particularly those related with the controversial learning styles concept. Roughly defined, a learning style intends to be a model of the way and media an apprentice acquires knowledge and hence the way a teacher should present that knowledge to the apprentice matching his/her learning style. Independently of the many controversies (be these scientific, psychological or even ethical) about the soundness and real outcomes that such ideas can bring to improve learning, it's a worthy intriguing research area for many researchers pursuing the ideal automated teacher: the teachbot dream. Behind this goal we have developed Middle, a Moodle plug-in able to infer the learning style of each student taking a course using an advanced version of a Bayesian network model that we previously tested. Middle intends support personalized teaching based on the Felder-Silverman's ILS model and has been evaluated through controlled experiments and pilot test in high schools and university courses. Such experiments showed promising results that shed some light on learning styles modeling and its potential outcomes. During the experience we found strong limitations in the Moodle design regarding its supposed flexibility to incorporate new functionalities. From a strict software architecture point of view, we found that such flexibility is far from being enough to easier the implementation of the dynamic computational behavior required to support a teachbot. This made our effort much harder than expected, perhaps because of the illusion induced by the widespread use of Moodle. In this article we present our results and experiences extending Moddle with intelligent behavior from a software architecture point of view, focusing on the lessons learnt in such extension. Our experience indicates that this simplicity is far from being so and hence it is worth to share the limitations and how we overcome them.