Many thanks for your comment. Nothing beats a contribution from the horse’s mouth – so to speak! I’ve bookmarked your blog, and started following you on Twitter – hope you’re tempted to reciprocate.

Cheers,
Martin

Interesting you mention the 5 stages of grief. Now that you mention it, that one is a bit suspect…

Imagine you were a scientist who had studied grief. And that you had come to the conclusion that the 5 stages were a load of nonsense. And that you had a friend who was grieving. And that friend told you how much the 5 stages were helping them come to terms with the ‘process’.

What would you say to your friend? Hopefully, nothing. There’s a time and a place for everything.

I’m like Martin, suspicious of certification. And because of this, I’m susceptible to the ‘Learning Styles Don’t Exist’ meme. I’m predisposed to antipathy towards an ‘apartheid of the senses’.

But throwing out Learning Styles doesn’t mean throwing out all the benefits they have brought (and they have brought benefits). Differentiation is a crucial concept in teaching groups. Learning Styles’ debunking doesn’t change this. Tickling the senses hasn’t stopped being effective. Visual thinking and the benefits of physical movement haven’t stopped being valid.

Learning Styles are dead. Long live, erm, my personal style of learning.

Thanks again for yet another thoughtful and profound response. Your comment is also a fine example of how a personal story – i.e. yours – can bring a potentially dry and abstract theoretical discussion to life.

Personally, I have always resisted the pressure to join the certification arms race, but I accept that a stance like mine becomes increasingly difficult when your competitors are continually building their ‘credibility’ through the acquisition of dubious qualifications – e.g. you can become a master practitioner of some disciplines in less than a week!

By comparison, the road to scientific knowledge and enlightenment is long and arduous – and many of us don’t have what it takes to embark on the journey in the first place.

Finally, just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, I have to tell you there is a darkside to the idea of learning styles too. I plan to write a blog about it soon, but put simply it’s this: learning styles encourage a kind of apartheid of the senses. She’s a visual learner, he’s auditory etc. This is destructive because it ignores the fact that our senses are connected with each other to a greater or lesser degree – in other words, we are all synaesthetes. But more on this later…

Cheers,
Martin

“Fable-ous but sometimes tragic
Learning Styles are too good to be true. But too truthy to be ignored. Learning Styles have a teachable narrative. Learning Styles are Fable-ous. At least, my version of them is.

But when they’re institutionalised it’s a tragedy. Learning Styles don’t exist but that doesn’t stop them being a part of many practitioners’ training, which is fine, and the way their performance is assessed, which is decidedly not.”
Learning styles, the way I integrated them, at my own very personal learning “sauce”, are indeed Fable-ous.
They are very attractive and hold a promise of an ideal world where you could offer each child or adult learner his most appropriate intellectual nourishment.
“Sur-mesure learning!” (opposed to fast food learning)
Learning à la Carte!
Slow learning for Gourmet…
Isn’t it a dream for learners?
Now I understand it can become a NIGHTMARE for teachers, if it’s institutionalized, like it seems to be in the UK and in the US.
It’s absolutely not the case in France, and my reaction comes more from a personal desire to offer a maximum of choices in the examples I provide, in the methods I use, in the way I present the content, in the activities I engage my participants into, in the improvisation moments I create, in the playing and story telling.
So, I found myself going through the 5 stages of grief. (If that is also STILL valuable and not another myth, who knows, now?) http://www.memorialhospital.org/library/general/stress-THE-3.html

1. Denial and Isolation. (Sulked and didn’t speak or write about it several days)
2. Anger.(Boiling, speaking to myself, fulminating, laughing sarcastically…)
3. Bargaining. ( I think I’m still into bargaining!!!)
4. Depression. (yes, I feel sad about it. Intellectually cheated. Betrayed)
5. Acceptance. (Another step towards maturity and wisdom)
Watching Professor Daniel T Willingham repeating calmly and softly learning styles don’t exist, without offering anything else in substitution, is indeed depressing (and exasperating!!!)
I’d love to see another video, with someone holding prestigious recognized highest degrees in neuro science, cognitive psychology, encouraging teachers to develop their creativity and giving them some clues in how to become better teachers.
May be Sir Ken Robinson actually is doing that? (he’s no neuro-scientist, but no charlatan either
His TED presentation was an international success, among non academic audience. It gives hope and faith in leaning.
And he does it with compassion and humour (which are NOT, I must confess, the qualities Prof Willingham is demonstrating in his video)

Bon, voilà, it was a long comment. I certainly will write a post about it, and most probably will again change my mind and refine my thinking thanks to other comments and posts like this one, Martin. Thanks.