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somervta comments on [Link] Why the kids don’t know no algebra - Less Wrong
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I think something very important to remember here is that different people learn differently. Genetics have a lot to do with that, and my (admittedly extremely limited) understanding is that US schools in general cater to different learning styles extremely poorly. Another thing to consider is raising. The most recent evidence suggests that how one is raised has an extremely significant effect on all aspects of mental ability - I think that that is likely to be far more important than anything which happens in school.
I've seen a lot of claims about different learning styles mattering, but I've never seen any actual studies that backed up that this was a substantial issue. Do you have evidence for this?
You don't have to believe in learning styles to believe in an unequal distribution of learning windows. Some kids (and adults) focus better in the morning, some late at night. Some can sit for prolonged periods without their attention flagging, others need to get up every 15 minutes to walk around and reset themselves. I don't know of any classroom models that correct for these differences. It could be an impossible task.
I want to support the idea of learning styles for two reasons. First, it seems unlikely to me to think that everyone learns the same way - even that the majority of people learn the same way. Secondly, we know specific ways in which people understand and handle such basic operations as counting fundamentally differently (see this Feynman passage "It's as Simple as One, Two, Three..." for an amusing anecdote about this). My prior says that learning styles are very likely.
If studies are saying that 'learning styles' don't matter, then I would say that the problem is that we haven't figured out what the real learning styles are and how to target those, not that there are no learning styles. The ones teachers talked about during school struck me as naive - but I bet there are some real ones out there.
"Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"
It seems to me you are hypothetically placing anecdotes over data here. Any reason why?
Re: original post: I agree that many many kids are overeducated given their hardware.
I think my above post gives those reasons. I have a large prior against this and don't think that studies that investigate popular learning styles are showing that there are no learning styles but rather that the learning styles educators currently use are not good.
I will be completely clear here: I have read none of the studies on the subject and what you are saying is a very valid criticism. I am not making a full argument here - I have no such argument. But I'm going to defy the data for now and wait until someone explains why people who hear numbers and people who see numbers best learn to count, add, etc. the same way.
Right, I was just wondering where your large prior comes from? (What magical place DO Bayesian priors come from?).
I will try to make this very explicit since I seem to be failing to communicate since I thought my last two posts stated the entirety of my view. Two points:
1.) There is a large variance in the human population. There are people who experience numbers in extremely different ways from others. There are people who experience the senses in very different ways than others. In order for me to believe that these differences play no part in the learning process, I will want to see some arguments as to why, theoretically, they don't matter as well as some experimental evidence that they don't. This is the primary cause for my large (not insurmountable) priors.
2.) The current studies are, to the best of my understanding which is rather limited, directed at testing the learning strategies that we have hypothesized so far. These learning strategies strike me as fairly petty and overly hopeful - "if I just say this him, he'll understand and if I just have her read this, she'll understand." I accept that these styles are not genuine styles. But I don't see reason to go beyond this to say that there are no useful differences in styles.
If you want to convince me, tell me why my intuition in number 1 is wrong or show me a study that has managed to go beyond the existing spattering of fad learning styles and has systematically shown that the existence of any learning styles is very unlikely. Preferably both. I am genuinely interested in hearing counter-points to this position, but am growing tired of restating my position. I hope this time has clarified exactly what I think.
Go Bayes! So if you just make your priors big enough, you never have to change your mind.
Weren't learning styles type ideas mostly debunked or rather turned out to be something for which very little evidence existed?
I would very much like citation since your most recent evidence conflicts with most of the other evidence I am aware of! From what I know early childhood interventions produce effects but these are temporary gains that mostly wear off over time, having very little to no effect on adult performance.
Having done some research, I find that you are correct, at least as regards to parenting and genetics. My 'cached' opinion was based on misleading information absorbed for what I though was good reason, but, on reflection, was just blindly following authority. Retracted.
Citing any key material you looked up might be useful for other people. Awesome job on actually checking out the literature yourself a bit and updating!
Rationalist hugs for you (if you want them)!
(^_^)
You're adorable.
I'm not sure how to take that.
As encouragement :)
I don't know. But the converse is that there's one style that's optimal for nearly everybody. Yet many different styles are used in practice around the world. Which style is supposed to be best?
ETA: retracted, my bad. I thought you were talking about "teaching styles" not "learning styles".
Actually, teaching styles is more what I meant. Perhaps a better phrasing would have been different people respond to learning differently, though that still doesn't sound right. For this, I have only anecdotal evidence, albeit quite strong. I've seen it, both in people I've tried to teach things to, and in people I've learned alongside.
I find the reactions to this topic in this thread very interesting, given that the (currently) second-most-upvoted article on the site contains this passage: