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.
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.
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.