Sunday, July 1, 2012

Activity 4.3


I am intrigued by the concept of learning styles and the role they play in education because I agree that individuals take in and process information in various ways. However, this article presented some difficulties for me. I have never really been a fan of reading material that presents a bunch of hypotheses and results, and I cannot really follow everything that is going on. From this article, I concluded that although the concept of learning-styles is important in learning, there is limited evidence to support the validity of incorporating learning-style assessments in educational settings.

While reading this article, I was thinking about what I considered to be my learning-style. Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork (2009) referenced Dunn and Dunn (1992; 1993; 1999) stating, “Learning style is the way in which each learner begins to concentrate on process, absorb, and retain new and difficult information” (p. 107). I honed in on the word begins because it suggests that individuals can have more than one style of learning. As for me, I believe I receive a better understanding of information when visual examples are used, and when visual examples are not possible, verbal examples work as well. Therefore, I wonder if the use of examples, itself, would be considered a learning style, regardless of whether it is visual or verbal.

Also, I appreciate the clarifications made by the authors, specifically, acknowledging that one particular learning style will not be conducive for all subject matter. For me, this relates back to the idea that individuals will begin with one dominate learning style, but will have to adapt to other types of styles according to what they are trying to learn

2 comments:

  1. I hope you'll leave this article with more reservation about using the term "learning style," as one of the key points in the article is that not enough research has been done in this area to conclude that individuals learn best when their learning preference matches instructional modality.

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  2. Yes. I believe this concept actually clicked better for me after hearing other classmates talk about in class.

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