The New York Times published a fascinating article last week about how kids learn.
The biggest surprise for me was this paragraph:
"Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are 'visual learners' and others are auditory; some are 'left-brain' students, others 'right-brain.' In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. 'The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,' the researchers concluded."
Still, the researchers qualified their conclusions with this: "However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all."
Hmm. I think many of us have loads of (okay, anecdotal) evidence that some of our students learn best by doing, others by hearing, etc.
The study also revealed that the four most powerful approaches to learning are:
1. alternating study environments
2. mixing content
3. spacing study sessions
4. self-testing
The article has generated lots of buzz such as this series of techniques. Read more about it; I think you'll be intrigued. I was.
