Last night was the first session of our ICT in Teaching and Learning module. The subject matter for the evening, once all the introductory bit was over, was around learning styles and how they can be supported/accommodated by the use of ICT.

I have trouble with the basic premise, since I have little faith in the concept of learning styles. There are so many different models, and much of the theory behind them seems either sketchy or suspect. So much so, that Becta came out with a rather skeptical report in 2005. My understanding is that National Strategies withdrew their material around learning styles last year, having lost faith in the concept. In my own community of practice, the concept has little currency.
Nevertheless, many schools are enamoured of the concept and some of my classmates have shared some anecdotes that reveal practices of questionable ethics in the adoption of one or other model of learning styles within the school.

As part of the lesson, we undertook the Felder Silverman questionnaire. I became increasingly frustrated that I was made to choose between pairs of options. In some cases, I was equally likely to do both things on offer. In others, I was unlikely to do either. Nevertheless, I could leave no blanks and I could only choose one option in each case. The implication being that the two options were mutually exclusive and that, between them, they covered all possibilities.

When the results were revealed, they were true to a certain extent of my behaviours – particularly in those instances where my score was decidedly one end or the other of the continuum in question. However, reading descriptions of the opposite approach, I related to many of the characteristics which were supposedly diametrically opposed to my own. As one classmate and I discussed after the lesson – it depends what I’m learning. I came out strongly global in style on one continuum, which is a fair description of the way I approach many tasks. However, I am an avid fan of cryptic crossword puzzles and sudokus and a dab hand at complicated knitting and the assembly of flatpacked furniture. All these occupations require a strongly sequential approach with which I am thoroughly content. To me, the explanation that I must have acquired coping mechanisms to be able to carry out these tasks is purely a cop out to explain away anomalies that would otherwise cast a question mark over the validity and reliability of the model.