Tag: multiple intelligences

Your Learning Style Revealed

I’m just going to put this right here. That way, the next time someone talks to me about their learning style or talking to their students about learning styles or explains why they weren’t good at math because it didn’t involve kickball, “Because, really, I’m a kinesthetic learner,” all I’ll have to do is send them to this link.

I’ll paste this for those who are click-resistant:

Is there any evidence to support the learning styles concept?
Yes there is a little, but experts on the topic like Harold Pashler and Doug Rohrer point out that most of this evidence is weak. Convincing evidence for learning styles would show that people of one preferred learning style learned better when taught material in their favored way, whereas a different group with a different preference learned the same material better when taught in their favored fashion. Yet surprisingly few studies of this format have produced supporting evidence for learning styles; far more evidence (such as this study) runs counter to the myth. What often happens is that both groups perform better when taught by one particular style. This makes sense because although each of us is unique, usually the most effective way for us to learn is based not on our individual preferences but on the nature of the material we’re being taught – just try learning French grammar pictorially, or learning geometry purely verbally.

And lest there’s a whole baby con bathwater thing, I’ll want this here so we don’t confuse style and intelligence.

Maybe I’ll get little cards printed up.

4/365 Let’s Learn to Draw

If you, like me, are as enamored with pretty much anything RSA Animate brings to the web or have had the pleasure of being at a conference facilitated by my friend Stacey Weitzner, when you’ve probably had the thought, “I wish I could do that.”

Making my way through the ole “ETC” folder of PDFs I’ve been meaning to read for longer than I’d like to admit, I finally read Brandy Agerbeck’s Brandyfesto (and you should too).

I’ll offer you three reasons to read it rather than pulling it apart for you. At 26 pages, it’s a brief read.

  1. While teachers are often heavy in the linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences to make their way to the front of the classroom, we’re often pledging to bring other intelligences to our teaching and our students’ learning. Agerbeck goes one better and asks her readers to try their hands at developing their kinesthetic intelligences.
  2. Quote 1: We get far too hung up on product. It’s only one part of the whole. Build a practice you enjoy. Do the work. Do the work some more. Observe and admire your progress. Develop that challenge you. The product will follow.
  3. Quote 2: As a noun, I listen to conversation and look for its shape.

I know more has been written on the art of graphic facilitation, but this was the first piece I’ve read that asked me to join in as I considered its place in learning.

Agerbeck’s Brandyfesto brought up two thoughts for me:

  1. I wish I could do a brief “book club” examining it with a team of teachers.
  2. I can’t believe how much I missed as a classroom teacher in not asking my students if I had any graphic facilitators in the room.

What do you think?

One of my favorite RSA Animate videos: