In fact scientists have found that variety boosts both attention and retention.
–Patti Neighmond on NPR’s Morning Edition (2011): Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely
Morning Edition has an excellent piece that points out that there is little or no actual experimental data supporting the idea that teaching should be individually tailored for different learning styles.
So presenting primarily visual information for visual learners has no proven benefit.
This is something we’ve seen before, however, this article points out that providing each student with the same information in different ways makes it much more interesting for them, increasing their motivation to learn and their retention of what was taught.
Which is fortunate because it means that if you were trying to teach in multiple ways, hoping that the more vocal stuff benefits the auditory learners and the pretty diagrams resonate more with the visual learners, even if this principle is all wrong, all of your students would still have gotten the benefits of variety.
Another key point is that:
Recent studies find our brains retain information better when we spread learning over a period of time versus cramming it into a few days or weeks.
–Patti Neighmond on NPR’s Morning Edition (2011): Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely
So the educational psychologist, Doug Rohrer, recommends giving less math problems at a time but spreading the work out over a longer time. Our block schedule, with three weeks on and three weeks off, ought to work well for this, since students will be studying math intensely on the on-blocks and doing revision assignments on the off-blocks.
The article is below: