No Evidence of Learning Styles

I know that there are many people who believe that there is such a thing as learning styles. However, there is little research from cognitive research that supports it.

In this video, Daniel Willingham, who recently published "Why Don't Students Like School?" explains why there is no support for learning styles. Something is going on the way students learn things differently but not what we may think.

So building on yesterday's post look at this current research. It will be worth the 6 minutes to watch it and well worth it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk&feature=channel_page

Check Your References

Click on the familiar quote to the right and check out the author. Huh? I have seen this quote attributed to many other authors including Lao Tzu and the basis upon which Dale's Cone of Experience is built -- although the research it is based on turns out to be shady at best even though it makes sense intuitively.

The point of this short blog post today is that we have got to make sure that when we tell students something it is factual and will withstand scutiny or we risk putting our integrity and respectability on the line. Never mind having students go out into the world and spread our inaccuracies.

National Outreach Scholarship Conference

I am at the 10th annual National Outreach Scholarship Conference at University of Georgia. You food enthusiasts would have loved the opening reception at the football stadium at club level. The food and personal service were exemplary. The honor bar was not that bad either.

While at this Conference I have seen the countless ways that faculty in all disciplines connect their classrooms to national and international venues to enhance student learning and make the lives of others -- no little or great the need -- a little better, whether the project is little or big in scope, which in turn enriches the lives and learning of those who serve. This was evident in the more than 100 poster sessions that were available for viewing and discussing during the first day of the Conference.

The keynote by Dr. Gee, President of Ohio State University, wondered aloud what is going to take to recognize and reward the efforts of those who connect their classroom to touch the lives of others -- as compared to rewarding resarch on a singular topic in some obscure research journal that may benefit the community at large -- when it comes to merit pay and/or promotion & tenure. I could not agree more.

If interested in this conference for the future, which will be held next year at North Carolina State University, the URL is: www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/conferences/outreach_conference/index.phtml

We are the Problem!

So, just when you think the challenges and joys that come from teaching are modern day issues along comes a painting done in the mid-14th century of a teacher in the classroom of those times. Look familiar? See the kids talking? How about the one sleeping? Or, the male student eye-balling the female in the second row?

If your classroom looks like this one, perhaps it is time to make a change and try something different and realize it is not the students that have a problem with learning -- it is our approach to teaching, perhaps!

For more information on this painting of a medievel university lecture and the role of the professor through the ages, check out a great powerpoint at:
www.sloanconsortium.org/conference/proceedings/2007/ppt/1191515466567.ppt

Keep Doing What You Do!