Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Educational Myths

    The most surprising myth to me was the one about the different learning styles (audio, visual, etc.). I have spent much of my life believing that these styles really do affect how each child learns. Many of my lessons that I have written have had different learning styles in mind. I had never heard about the percentage thing so that was also very interesting. It did not seem very plausible though.
    I'm not really sure how to phrase this because I don't necessarily disagree because it's backed by research, but I feel like students do have different learning styles to an extent. It is definitely easier for me to learn when I have things written out for me versus when I have things told to me. But, it really does depend on the situation and I would not say that I need things written all of the time. Perhaps it's not necessarily a thing that's ingrained or specific to each student, but some things are more helpful than others.
    I have had professors that want me to speak to each learning style when planning lessons or activities. Especially in high school did I see these different learning styles mentioned. I often took tests or quizzes to figure out what learning style I was. The teachers never did much with it, but they made sure that we knew which style we were.
    To change someone's mind, I would suggest that it is not true and offer to show them some research. I would simply say, "huh. I actually heard that that is untrue. I read an article about it in my fifth year at GV." I would then suggest that it is nice to plan lessons for different learning styles or to make sure that students really get it, but it's more important to focus on making sure the student is focused and interactive. If a teacher plans a whole lesson toward auditory learners and the kids get nothing out of it, then it's not because they are not auditory learners, but because the lesson was not captivating or the teacher went to fast or another reason.