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Myth Of Learning Styles Analysis

Decent Essays

In the article “The Myth of Learning Styles,” authors Cedar Riener and Daniel Willingham (2010) question whether learning styles actually effectively play a role in a student’s learning. They begin by defining what a learning style is, which is explain as how a student best learns from the information they receive, and currently learning styles are most commonly described through sensory, such as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learning styles (Riener & Willingham, 2010). Riener and Willingham (2010) argue that there are no learning styles, but rather that learning depends on a student’s prior knowledge, background, and interests. They address this by providing three myths of learning styles, one myth that is correct and two that are not. …show more content…

The second myth states that aside from ability and content, students have a preferred learning style that has an impact on how they learn and perform (Riener & Willingham, 2010). The third and last myth presented is that if teachers were to match their teaching to student’s preferred learning styles, then students would learn better and improve (Riener & Willingham, 2010). Riener and Willingham conclude by examining that although students say they have a preferred learning style, research shows that there really is no difference if a student is taught in their preferred style or not, but rather student learning depends highly on prior knowledge and experience, because every student has different prior knowledge and their own unique experience with learning that every student may perform better on the content they specifically understood more and/or found more interesting (Riener & Willingham,

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