Student “Learning Styles” Theory Is Bunk (Daniel Willingham)
U-Va. cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?.” This post appeared September 14, 2009.
Since the publication of Howard Gardner‘ Frames of Mind in the early 1980s in which he pointed out the many ways that children and adults learn, popularization of “multiple intelligences” in the early 1990s has fused multiple intelligences with teaching to different “learning styles.” Practitioners have glommed onto multiple intelligences and different learning styles. Schools have committed themselves to cultivating multiple learning styles such as the Key Learning Community in Indianapolis (IN). Willingham challenges the concept of varied learning styles and offers an alternative explanation for how and what children learn–their background, interests, aptitudes, and knowledge they bring to a topic–rather than “learning styles.”
According to the theory, if we know what sort of a learner a child is, we can optimize his or her learning by
Since the publication of Howard Gardner‘ Frames of Mind in the early 1980s in which he pointed out the many ways that children and adults learn, popularization of “multiple intelligences” in the early 1990s has fused multiple intelligences with teaching to different “learning styles.” Practitioners have glommed onto multiple intelligences and different learning styles. Schools have committed themselves to cultivating multiple learning styles such as the Key Learning Community in Indianapolis (IN). Willingham challenges the concept of varied learning styles and offers an alternative explanation for how and what children learn–their background, interests, aptitudes, and knowledge they bring to a topic–rather than “learning styles.”
According to the theory, if we know what sort of a learner a child is, we can optimize his or her learning by