[ProfessionalDevelopment 1926] Debunking Multiple Intelligences andLearning StylesHello Andres and Tom:

Again, in K-12 there is also the movement called "Professional Learning Communities" (Google it) which means systematic, regular, and institutionalized collaboration (and ongoing PD) among professionals (with or without a speech pathologist) with the student at the center of the process.  Also, action research has begun to re-empower the teacher as the person who recognizes, researches/actively collaborates, and corrects learning problems in their classrooms.   Another thread-reference that may be of interest is www.rethinkingschools.org.   

I read the syllabus--it sounds like it's well put-together, and it's put out by World Education--have you looked at their website?  Again, Learning Styles is certainly not a theoretically finished or closed issue.  But it's here to stay and most probably to be developed further because teachers find it so helpful in their pedagogy.  The teachers that I work with have really picked up that ball and run with it.  

Also, the PLC framework may be something that Adult Ed program directors may want to take a look at.  Perhaps a VLC?  -- Volunteer Learning Community?

Catherine King
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Muro, Andres 
  To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List ; professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov 
  Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2008 8:30 AM
  Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1929] Re: Debunking Multiple IntelligencesandLearning Styles


  Tom:

  Actually, there is both evidence and some research on learning styles and language processing in terms of visual, auditory and kinesthetic preferences. For example, research in Japan found that children with difficulty acquiring Kana (phonetic) signs were able to acquire Kanji (pictographic) signs without problems. Researchers interpreted that these children favored a visual teaching style and they use this style to teach Kana signs with a pictographic approach. 

  Deaf people who learn to read and write fluently favor a pictographic approach since the cannot rely on phonetic clues to learn to read. On the other hand blind people must learn to read through a kinesthetic and phonetic approach. Finally deaf mute people learn through a purely kinesthetic approach. 

  While these examples are for extreme cases they show that when there is an impairment to an area of the brain that prevents language acquisition through a given mode, another area of the brain can take over the function. Research in aphasias has given clues of how the brain does this. 

  With most learners, all areas of the brain are perfectly functional so they will acquire language w/o much difficulty. However, with some learners they may have minor impairments in one area of the brain and a linguistic approach that favors a different learning style would be recommended. However, this would require that programs use speech pathologist that can identify linguistic preferences. Most programs, even in the public schools don't offer this. 

  While most children acquire some measure of language fluency, a few don't. As adults, they have difficulty with language. Many attend ABE programs. If it is a linguistic impairment that prevented them from acquiring signs, an alternative approach needs to be used. However, if someone is not able to identify the barrier, the correct approach will not be used.

  In the US some kids are identified as dyslexic because they mix letters. It appears that these children may have an impairment in the auditory pathways particularly in the Wernike's area. These happens because English is mostly a phonetic language and English acquisition depends largely on phonetic clues. When an auditory impairment appears, difficulty in acquisition emerges. So, a pictographic approach ought to be recommended for these children. However, since most don't know anything about language impairments and teaching approaches, most push for phonetics to death. Consequently many kids fail to acquire the language properly. Until people are diagnosed with appropriate tools by trained diagnosticians the proper interventions won't be possible. And, the research on learning styles that is currently being conducted has all the elements of dorkiness and feel goodness that you seem to be criticizing, which characterizes a lot of what happens with ABE.

  Andres






------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of tsticht at znet.com
  Sent: Fri 2/8/2008 5:37 PM
  To: professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov
  Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1926] Debunking Multiple Intelligences andLearning Styles


  Colleagues: I have followed discussions on several NIFL-sponsored discussion
  lists recently in which people have advocated teaching to learning styles or
  to multiple intelligences. This is strange to me given that the federal
  government has argued for the use of evidence-based, scientifically
  validated approaches to adult literacy education (see the What Works
  Clearinghouse sponsored by the U.S Department of Education). But by even
  loose standards of evidence, there is no credible evidence to support
  teaching to a person's learning style, preferred learning modality (i.e.,
  visual, auditory, kinesthetic), multiple intelligences, right brain-left
  brain preference, or other very malformed ideas. Indeed, there are a wide
  variety of so-called learning styles (impusive vs reflective; introverted
  vs extroverted; field dependent vs field dependent and on and on)and no
  research on how a teacher can take all of them into account everyday and
  over weeks and months. It is not even certain that a learning style stays
  the same from the beginning of a course to the end of the course. While I
  understand the desire of the NIFL to promote useful discussions among adult
  literacy educators, with only a minimum of censorship, it strikes me as
  counter productive to advocate for evidence-based, scientifically validated
  teaching while also permitting the advertisement of commercial workshops
  that are based on poorly formed concepts and devoid of empirical evidence
  for the efficacy of such ideas and the practices based on them. Tom Sticht
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