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Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Leave Learning Styles Alone




It is hard to fault educators and schools for jumping on the learning style train, which seemed to be heading in the right direction. It just made sense. Everyone knows children are different. Some are great at drawing. Some can see a diagram and quickly construct a model. Others seem to have an intuitive grasp of mathematics. Still other children have a gift with words and the verbal concepts, which may be analyzed in-depth. But the scientific evidence for learning styles is not there.

Four scientists were engaged to study the widespread practice of teaching by emphasizing learning styles. They published their findings in Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

The idea of learning styles generally means that children learn better when teachers match their mode of instruction to the child's learning style. The idea is that children may learn best by emphasizing some specific auditory, visual, or kinesthetic modality. Schools can evaluate a child's learning style then match a teaching style to a learning style. Thus the idea of learning styles also includes an idea about assessment. That is, a belief that it is possible to use a set of questions to determine a child's learning style. For example, if a child is a visual learner then the child will learn best when instructions are presented visually.

Fortunately, Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork reviewed the research and published the summary I mentioned above. Despite a comprehensive review, they did not find evidence supporting the value of teaching according to supposed learning styles.

Some Details About Learning Styles

Different Abilities

There is reasonable evidence that people, including children, have different intellectual strengths or abilities. We have some 80 years of evidence identifying different abilities. And there is evidence that these abilities are usually intercorrelated suggesting an overall general ability. But this correlation does not undermine the evidence for distinct patterns of strength. For example, some have greater verbal abilities than quantitative abilities. But here's the rub. Having different abilities does not mean people learn differently or that different teaching styles are required for those with different abilities to learn the same concepts.

Different Teaching Methods

If the learning styles idea is a good one then there ought to be an interaction such that visual learners would excel using teaching methods matched to their visual style and auditory learners ought to learn best when taught using an auditory teaching method. You can imagine the converse. You would not expect great results if you taught visual learners using auditory teaching methods. Unfortunately, as sensible as this teaching-learning style match sounds, the research does not support the idea.

Different Personality Factors

An interesting aside is a finding that the personality dimension called locus-of-control seems to be relevant to learning. Those with a high external locus of control do better with highly structured learning activities and those with high inner locus of control do better with less structured learning activities. Locus of control refers to core beliefs about how much a person controls their life outcomes. Those with a higher inner locus of control have a strong belief in their responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The science behind locus of control is based on work by Rotter (1966).

Different Content Requires Different Teaching

Although beliefs in learning styles and beliefs about matching teaching to learning styles lacks supportive evidence, we should not confuse these beliefs with beliefs about teaching different content.

Let's be clear. If you want to teach a child to solve a geometry problem you will use verbal instructions and visual materials rather than rely on speech or text alone. If telling a child to hang up her clothes when she gets home from school does not work (i.e., has not been learned) then you might want to try another approach for behavioral learning such as having her perform the task while you provide feedback. Similarly, teaching children how to pass a soccer ball is best done on a field rather than by showing a video.

We do, however, need research on matching different teaching methods to different content.

In Discipline with Respect, I focus on ways to help children learn respectful behavior that will help them become responsible adults. My point in taking up the topic of learning styles in this blog is to help parents and teachers avoid mythology surrounding the education of children. Discipline is education. Different discipline methods work with different children. But for most parents, discipline strategies based on solid principles will work with most children. As with learning in school, learning behavior will sometimes require specialized instruction.

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References

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 106-119.

Rotter, J.B. (1966). Generalized expectancies of internal versus external control of reinforcements. Psychological Monographs, 80, (Whole no. 609).


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Monday, November 27, 2017

What About Spanking? A Recent Study





Parents either believe in the value of spanking or they don’t. Many young parents will be guided by scientific evidence but others will follow traditional practices, which often include spanking.

Psychological Science does not support the value of spanking. There is reasonable evidence linking parental spanking by age 5 to behavior problems at ages 6 and 8.

Here’s a quote from Dr. Gershoff of the University of Texas at Austin on findings from their recent study.
 
“Our findings suggest that spanking is not an effective technique and actually makes children’s behavior worse not better.”

Spanking, Ethics, and Research

The reason psychologists cannot speak with a certainty is that it is unethical to conduct experiments where children are randomly assigned to spanking and nonspanking parents.

Sample Size

The sample size was huge. Gershoff and her colleagues looked at the results from 12,112 children whose parents participated in the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.  After identifying those who spanked, the scientists formed a comparison group of parents who did not spank but were similar based on 38 parent and child characteristics such as gender, health, behavior problems, parent’s education, and their social-economic level. They looked at the size of the household and degree of conflict in the home. The also matched on age and marital status. The goal was to create two equivalent groups whose main difference was spanking or not spanking. Read more in the article--see link below.

Spanking: Survey Data

According to an ABCNEWS poll, 65% of U S parents support spanking. About half admit they spank their own children at time but most do not approve of spanking in schools-- 72% believe it should not be permitted.

There is a regional difference. More parents in the U S South (62%) spank than those who live elsewhere (41%).

Spanking also varies with a parent's education. Among those with college degrees, 38% spank but 55% of those with less than a college education spank.

There are no state laws that prohibit spanking in general. But 27 states have policies against spanking. At the time of the poll, spanking was permitted in schools in 23 states. 

What do parents do?

A study of parenting trends between 1988 and 2011 found that U S parents have used less physical discipline. For example, mothers with a median income, reported the use of physical punishment at 21% in 2011 compared to 46% in 1988.  So, what are parents doing? More parents are opting for timeouts and talking with children instead of spanking. (Strauss at Slate)

I should note that timeouts are also challenged. Here's a link to the timeout discussion. https://ifstudies.org/blog/positive-parenting-is-ideal-but-many-children-need-time-outs-too/ 

Technical notes
Surveys rely on self-report, which can be subject to positive impression management.
Large surveys (usually over 1,000) can reduce bias when there is an effort to ensure the sample is representative of a population.
Writers in leading publications write about timeout as one word or with a hyphen, time-out.


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