Which learning myths tend to surface most often in your teaching or training context and how might you address them through your course design, training activities, or communication with your students or other staff members?
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I will echo that the “learning styles” myth is very pervasive. It does become hard to decouple “learning” from “engagement” – a student may start class well-focused but start to lose interest several minutes into a lecture. This does not mean that a student is not able to learn from one style of teaching, it may just mean that I have to break up the monotony. One thing I find in my classes (chemistry) is that I have to walk a fine line between being general (i.e., explain how an equation with variables applies to many molecules) and giving concrete examples (i.e., give a problem with numbers).
I have heard great teachers at this college share the idea of visual versus auditory learning with students, so it is a myth deeply entrenched even at this level.
Agreed with Tim – One thing that I’ve dealt a lot with in my intro psych class this year is how deeply difficult it is to dislodge the idea of “learning style.” I try to underscore the need for distributed practice, metacognition, etc., but students are convinced that they need to learn “in accordance with their learning styles.” I’m happy to provide multiple contexts for the knowledge I present, and I try to underscore that learning styles aren’t accurately grounded in cognitive psychology or the science behind learning and memory.
“Learning Styles” is something I encounter a lot and is difficult to dislodge. When it doesn’t do much harm, for instance when someone informs me that they favor kinesthetic learning, I don’t mind much because we all benefit from moving our bodies and avoiding being too stationary in our learning and our work. However, when someone tells me something like, “I’m not good at listening because I’m a visual learner,” I feel an obligation to bring up that most of the ‘learning styles’ assertions are not grounded in learning science, etc.
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