There’s a school of thinking that students learn better from one style – be it visual learners, auditory learners or even movement. Now researchers are starting to doubt this thinking.
Research from the University of Virginia is now leaning towards a more egalitarian way of learning. Psychologist Dan Willingham found in his study that our brains learn in similar ways and that it’s a mistake to segregate students into separate learning styles. He suggests it would be more useful to figure out the similarities in how our brains learn, rather than our differences.
Doug Rohrer, a psychologist of the University of South Florida, agrees. In looking at the learning styles theory he found no scientific evidence to support it. Rohrer and his colleagues are looking into what teaching methods work best for all students - those results are not available yet.
Recent studies have also shown that the “little and often” approach works better than cramming information in over a shorter period of time. We certainly endorse that thinking at K5 Learning, where our lessons are intentionally broken down into bite-size segments to ensure they don’t loose their concentration and commit their learning to long-term memory.