Learning styles

Well, something that makes no sense to me.

Let's talk about learning styles.

Because I keep seeing this more and more online and even just communication with talking to fellow colleagues over the years is this overlap of similarities between UDL and learning styles.

Now, the learning nerds at home, they know these are not the same thing.

My audience is very smart.

But when you hear this sentiment at work, and this does come about, well, obviously, you want to pull out your hair.

That's, of course, not the correct way to approach with this.

But if someone at a university right now does encounter this with a colleague, they bring up trying to bring about UDL and Immediately, they talk about learning styles.

... you know, we enjoy moving around and moving our body.

In the book, before you kind of highlight the learning styles, you do talk about allowing for breaks, snacks, and movement.

Mm-hmm.

And this is such a easy, short, simple sentence.

So talk to me-

They don't have the-

... about those learning styles because I am-

Mm-hmm

Yeah.

Lots of people have different learning styles, don't they? And we've got to try and make sure that we make our knowledge as accessible as possible so people aren't being excluded from that and we can all just do the best job possible with the right materials on the right preps and the right time.

You know, so...

When I first ever got asked to do a lecture, when I was a student technician at the time, and I was asked to go and give a lecture.

So that's the approach that I take, and it continues to get results because I've been to some of the most challenging urban schools around the country where people think that our children are not interested or where they think that our parents are not interested.

And what I've found is that when we teach them in a way that takes their learning styles into account, the response is absolutely phenomenal.

And so that's what encourages me to continue on.

So, and then despite the appearances, we are making progress.

We learn differently from white students.

I'm just wondering maybe next time we can get into that because they are visual or auditory when it comes to learning.

Yeah, we need to do a whole program just on the learning styles, the nature needs and learning styles of black children, which are unique.

and different from others so yeah we can definitely do that carl

That's what makes us powerful.

One thing you said in 2022 at our research retreat that's really stuck with me is that there's no such thing as a learning style, and that often people point to different learning styles to justify the use of new technology.

Can you explain that remark?

So if we go down to the very base, every human being learns in exactly the same way, and that comment makes most people kind of jar, but bear with me.

It's biology.

[chuckles] And if you are human, the process by which you take in, embody, quantify, combine, utilize knowledge, check that knowledge, is exactly the same for everyone.

So once we can kind of get back onto the base level of learning is a process, and if we know that process, we can make better decisions, then you can start to say, "Well, okay, maybe learning styles comes at the input." Just like some people can eat gluten, some can't, maybe that's where learning styles is.

But it turns out the research says no.