multiple intelligences

Learning Differences that Matter

Cedar Riener and Daniel Willingham expand on the argument (previously discussed here and here) that learning styles do not exist. They do not, however, deny that different people learn differently and this needs to be taken into account in teaching.

Real differences that affect learning:

Different talents: “[W]hether we call it talent, ability, or intelligence, people vary in their capacity to learn different areas of content.” (ᔥ Riener and Willingham, 2012). Some of this is probably genetic, while some of it is probably due of nuture., which leads to:
Different interests: Students with an interest in a subject are more motivated to learn and will learn it faster.
Different background knowledge: Student retain more then they are able to fit new knowledge into an existing mental scaffolding.
Learning disabilities: There are neurological differences that result in things like dyslexia that have a strong influence on how some students learn.

Riener and Willingham argue that while students do have preferences for ways they learn (visual vs. auditory vs. kinesthetic etc.) these have no real effect students’ learning. Information should be presented in ways that are appropriate to the content:

If I were to tell you “I want to teach you something. Would you rather learn it by seeing a slideshow, reading it as text, hearing it as a podcast, or enacting it in a series of movements,” do you think you could answer without first asking what you were to learn—a dance, a piece of music, or an equation? While it may seem like a silly example, the claim of the learning styles approach is that one could make such a choice and improve one’s learning through that choice, independent of content.

We all agree that some kids show more interest in math, some start their education more interested in poetry, and others are more interested in dodgeball. The proof that the learning-styles theorist must find is that for some sort of content—whether it be math, poetry, or dodgeball—changing the mode of presentation to match the learning styles helps people learn. That evidence has simply not been found.

— ᔥ Riener and Willingham, 2012: The Myth of Learning Styles in Change, The Magazine of Higher Learning.

Finally, they assert that, “it is a waste of time to assess learning styles rather than, for instance, background knowledge.”

Still, even with learning styles taken out of the equation, it seems to me that presenting information in multiple modes remains beneficial. It forces the teacher to approach the subject matter from different perspectives, and presents students with multiple opportunities to encounter information in a way that would fit into their existing knowledge scaffolding. However, it is useful to recognize that we don’t have to force ourselves too fit content into incongruent learning styles (although that in itself might be a useful mental exercise for the teacher, or a good way for students to demonstrate that they can apply their knowledge into other domains).

↬The Dish

Sensory Integration

… people learn a visual task better when it’s accompanied by sound, for instance — even when they are later tested using only vision.
— Humphries, 2011: The new science of our cross-wired senses in The Boston Globe.

What I think this means, is that there is now scientific evidence to support the widespread use of sound effects in lectures/presentations. Woohoo!

For the educator, the interaction between sound and vision is one of the fascinating findings of recent research on how our senses interact (see also the work of the Visual & Multisensory Perception Lab). It seems to add some support to the arguments for multimodal learning; rather than just targeting specific learning styles — auditory vs visual vs kinetic etc.– to specific people, including multiple styles of information should help everyone learn better.

But beyond just education a better understanding of how the senses interact has a lot of implications.

… what people saw affected what they heard; that certain types of music or background noise affected how food tasted; and that smells could influence how a texture felt to the touch.

— Humphries, 2011: The new science of our cross-wired senses in The Boston Globe.

This research is already affecting how things are marketed and presented to us.

A study published this year showed that people thought a strawberry mousse tasted sweeter, more intense, and better when they ate it off a white plate rather than a black plate.

— Humphries, 2011: The new science of our cross-wired senses in The Boston Globe.

This research is also pertinent to the issue of Sensory Integration Disorder, which, by some estimates, affects somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 20 children.

Learning from Multiple Perspectives Works Better

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:

modes-of-learning — The cycle of work. Within each subject area there are different types of assignments designed to provoke learning in many different styles.

The lessons, the individual works, the different group works, the reading; they’re all set up in this elaborate combination so that different students with different learning styles can get the information they need in the way that’s most meaningful to them. But the students also get to experience a wide range of learning styles so that they can become acclimatized to the different styles while actually figuring out which ones work best for them.

The logic behind this approach comes from Howard Gardner’s ideas on multiple intelligences. He argues that we have aptitudes for different ways of learning, and learning is easier and faster if students take advantage of their preferred learning styles. Whether we acquire these preferences through nature or nurture is an intriguing question, but by middle school I’ve found that it does not take long to recognize that some students have rather strong preferences.

[T]here exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early ‘naive’ theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains. – Gardner (1993) p. xix.

The learning intelligences have been defined in a number of different ways (see Smith, 2008 and BGfL for examples). We parse them like this:

Linguistic intelligence – learning from the written word or hearing words (auditory).
Logical/Math – using numbers and logical reasoning.
Bodily-kinesthetic – learning from doing.
Visual/Spatial – emphasizes images and relationships in space.
Interpersonal – learning from/with others.
Intrapersonal – introspective learning.
Musical – rhythm is important
Naturalistic – comprehending of the environment.

I prefer students to discover their preferred intelligences via the variations convolved into the curriculum, however, the BGfL has an online, multiple intelligences test that I’ve used in the past. However, as with standardized tests, you don’t want to stereotype students or have them stereotype themselves. All the intelligences interact. Different challenges force us to take different approaches, using different combinations of our intelligences to best effect. As always, a growth mindset is best. With their mental plasticity, adolescence is the best time to explore different learning approaches.