Learning Skills Instead of Learning Styles?
Wednesday, April 28
11:45-1:15 Buntrock 142
Chuck Huff, Psychology
(Co-sponsor: Department of Psychology)
Learning styles have received considerable attention in educational circles, yet a large literature on how people learn concludes that focusing on learning styles runs the risk of decreasing rather than increasing student learning. Wilbur McKeachie, a national leader in the psychology of teaching and learning cautions that:
"Thinking about learning styles can lead a teacher to think about different ways of teaching, and that is good. ...Nonetheless, as inmost things, there are potential undesirable side effects from the use of learning style concepts. Probably the most serious is that styles are often taken to be fixed, inherited characteristics that limit students' ability to learn in ways that do not fit their styles."
Please join Chuck Huff, who will lead a discussion of this issue.
We encourage those planning to participate in
this conversation to read the short article by McKeachie before
the session. (McKeachie, W. J. (1995). Learning Styles Can Become
Learning Strategies. National Teachers and Learner's Forum, Vol.4
No.6, Oryx Press. http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9511/article1.htm.)
