Second, are there different learning styles?
I was wondering what research has been done on this area. It’s not something I’ve looked into. However, I have spent years looking at the research on personality types and traits. I think it is a fair assessment to say that there is plenty of research supporting the theory that human brains work differently to varying degrees. There are commonalities to human brain function, but there is also much diversity. It seems obvious to me, going by the research I’ve seen and going by my own observations, that people do process information differently. This potentially could lead to different learning styles, whether or not such learning styles correlates to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.
This is an areas I can speak personally about. I had a learning disability as a child, still do. My learning disability just meant I learned differently, but it didn’t mean I was less smart. When I was in early elementary school, I wasn’t keeping up with the other students. They, at first, suspected I might be low IQ. But when they tested me, they found I was actually above average in IQ, at least in certain areas. For example, my ability to solve spatial puzzles was at a twelfth grade level.
So, that is my learning style. I’m very good at seeing patterns and making connections. However, I’m not good a rote memory. Traditional teaching methods didn’t work for me. Fortunately, I went to school that had a very good special education teacher who taught me a different way to learn. A main part of my learning disability is word recall. For this reason, I was behind on my reading and writing ability. One thing the special education teacher taught me was to think of similar words. If I can’t think of one word, I use another similar word. This caused me to increase my vocabulary and after that I was ahead of the other students in reading.
In my case, there was some connection between intellectual abilities and learning styles. If you tested me as a kid, I would have measured as low in verbal intelligence. But if you test me now, I would measure as high in verbal intelligence. So, what is the difference? I learned to use my other strengths (i.e., my other intellectual abilities) to compensate for my weaknesses (i.e., my learning disability, especially word recall). It would seem that word recall is a part of verbal intelligence. It would seem that my limited word recall ability means I lack a certain natural aspect of verbal intelligence. However, because I was intelligent in other ways, I could compensate. People who don’t have other types of intelligence wouldn’t be able to easily compensate. Even I, if I hadn’t had a good special edcuation teacher and parents who were teachers, might not have learned to compensate. If I had been a poor kid in a poor public school, I might have been simply categorized as low IQ and that would have been the end of it. For the rest of my life, I would have thought I was stupid.
As such, I’m a strong proponent of learning styles theory. I wish I had the opportunity to be taught differently all through school. After leaving that particular elementary school, I never again had a teacher that helped me to that extent. Despite being above average in intelligence, I always struggled with learning and so I learned to hate school. Teachers were always teaching rote memory, but I was never good at it. I dropped out of college partly because no one would teach the way I learned. The way I learn is by connecting information, by seeing or creating patterns in data. Isolated factoids are meaningless to me and it’s hard for me to remember them even if only for the short term of taking a test.
I was, however, lucky to have parents who were teachers and very helpful in my education. My mom was a speech pathologist and so she was used to kids who had minds that worked differently. So, despite school, my parents instilled in me a love of learning. I learned how to learn on my own.
Not everyone is a genius, that is true. On the other hand, not everyone who learns differently is stupid.
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It can be an excuse to just dismiss general intelligence just because it is inconvenient to our ideology. I was thinking of two examples where this becomes problematic.
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The first example is differences in IQ between races.
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Some people want to dismiss IQ testing because it has the potential to be used to support racist theories and those racist theories can influence public policy. But the problem isn’t the IQ tests. The problem I see is in understanding what the IQ tests represent.
IQ isn’t simply about natural ability. Kids who don’t get proper nutrition while the mother was pregnant and after they are born will tend to have lowered cognitive development. Kids who experience high rates of social stress and environmental toxins (especially lead poisoning) will tend to have lowered cognitive development. Kids who don’t have access to materials to stimulate their minds and don’t have parents with lots of free time to work on their learning will tend to have lowered cognitive ability. These types of kids are disproportionately found among the poor and minorities are disproportionately found among the poor. So, it’s no surprise that minorities on average have lower IQs when tested.
To demonstrate this, all you have to do is look at the IQ results as kids grow older. When young, there is no clear difference between the IQs of whites and minorities. The difference only shows up in later years of schooling. So, there is no evidence that the racial difference in IQ is genetic.
Because we see these racial differences, IQ testing is all that more important. It helps us to discover the causal factors in these racial differences. In understanding these causal factors, we can change them. We can take actions through public policy that increase the probability that poor children get proper nutrition, have less stressful environments, don’t get lead poisoning, and have intellectually stimulating materials and environments.
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Like the liberals who want to dismiss the racial IQ difference, there are conservatives who want to dismiss the ideological IQ difference. There are always people who want to dismiss inconvenient and uncomfortable data. I came across someone attempting to do that with the ideological IQ difference. Satoshi Kanazawa has proposed an explanation for why liberals test as more intelligent. In response, Shawn T. Smith has dismissed that explanation and in doing so seems to dismiss the idea of general intelligence as something IQ tests can measure or else he is just dismissing the correlation of verbal intelligence to general intelligence.
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Here is an interaction that shows the conflict between the two views (from the comment section of Shawn T. Smith’s article):
Let me ask you: do you believe that extrapolating a Full Scale IQ score from a vocabulary test is a valid, reasonable, and accurate thing to do? Don’t tap dance. Give me a straight answer. If you do believe it is a valid thing to do, tell me why. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong.
Also, do you agree with Kanazawa that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives? If so, why?
Yes, I suppose I was personally offended, but not because I am conservative (incidentally, I described my stance briefly in my deconstruction so you would know where I stand). I’m becoming increasingly offended by the degree and amount of irrationality and intolerance in my profession, both in research and in the clinic. It does offend me to see research abused this way. It makes all of us psychologists look silly.
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Here is another interaction about the same issue:
This takedown is really really nitpicky, the sort of nitpicky that that “they’re” vs “there” guy was doing earlier.
The correlation is extremely strong, so much as the data shown. The LSE guy might have overstated his case but the numbers don’t lie.
That crap about colleges = liberalism doesn’t weaken the correlation.
>>>>Second, a correlation once-removed is terribly shaky. What Kanazawa did here is akin to saying, “tables have four legs like dogs, and dogs resemble elephants in many ways, therefore tables are elephants.”
Errr no. I was taking you quite seriously until I saw this comment you made. I think your complaints are minor, but fair. But this statement is either stupid or disingenuous. He never claimed that liberals are smart. As we people who understand highschool statistics know, he’s saying there’s a correlation between intelligence and liberalism. That’s like saying a table is more similar to an elephant because both have 4 legs, than to a rock, which doesn’t.
PS: Your analogy sucks.
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Shawn T. Smith, Psy.D. (November 8, 2010 – 9:56pm: You said that my criticisms are nitpicky, but you glided right past the most salient ones. For example, I criticized Dr. Kanazawa for extrapolating full scale IQ score ranges from a rudimentary vocabulary test. Do you believe that to be a trivial point?
And I stand by my criticism of second-order correlations. We in the field of psychology have become far too accepting of strained correlations, meta-analyses, and other manifestations sloppy research. You and I may differ on that point because I am a clinician and I deal in individual cases, not numbers. If you deal in statistics – not that it’s good or bad, just different – you will undoubtedly see more value in things like second-order correlations.
But back to my original question: Was Kanazawa correct in deriving full scale IQ ranges from the vocabulary test? (Yes, I realize it can be done statistically. Anything can be done statistically.)
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And one more interaction:
1) PPVT is not a good measure of IQ
2) Liberal Colleges produce Liberals
The second one is completely illogical. I think we can agree that college graduates are smarter in general. Then you argue, of course college graduates (smarter people) are going to be more liberal, they are taught by liberals! Thus you are accepting the Hypothesis in order to disprove it.
Now the first one, which is an okay complaint, however, your emphasis on it is way too strong. Using PPVT and reporting IQ does damage the accuracy of the study, but to be fair, in order to make the study understandable to the general public IQ needs to be used. Furthermore, there have been studies that show that PPVT is a moderately good predictor of IQ, and you say it is often argued as a fairly good predictor of verbal intelligence.
Thus at best your ‘debunking’ shows that instead he should have written “Liberal are more verbally intelligent than conservatives” not merely intelligent.
Sorry, but your debunking is more biased than the study
1) PPVT is not even close to a measure of intelligence. I won’t restate my case here since I explained it in detail in the deconstruction to which you refer. Kanazawa’s attempt to connect the PPVT to full scale IQ is unsupportable. Had I tried a maneuver like that on my dissertation, I would have been laughed out of grad school. And rightfully so.
2) Evidence does not support the idea that college graduates are more intelligent than non-grads. Intelligence is a multi-faceted construct. College grads tend to do better on the verbal portion of IQ tests, and so it is no surprise that they gravitate toward an environment where verbal strength is an asset. That does not mean that college graduates function equally well in other areas of life requiring other skills. This explains why accountants and mechanics hire each other. They each play to their strengths – at least they do if they’re intelligent.
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To summarize, Shawn T. Smith makes three related claims:
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Here is my response:
Almost all intelligence relates to verbal intelligence. Even a mechanic needs the ability to have good reading comprehension in reading highly technical manuals. If verbal intelligence correlates to liberalism, it would be expected that more successful mechanics would be more liberal on average than less successful mechanics.
Besides, college doesn’t just teach verbal intelligence. If conservatives have other types of intelligence, then they should succeed just fine in certain academic fields just as long as they have moderate levels of verbal intelligence.
I don’t understand why Smith wants to dismiss verbal intelligence. It would be hard to be highly successful in any type of job without at least average if not above average verbal intelligence. If conservatives are below average in verbal intelligence, you’d expect to find them to have below average representation on the successful end of almost all careers.
For example, owners of janitorial businesses are probably on average more verbally intelligent and more liberal than the janitors that work for him/her. A business owner needs verbal intelligence to understand all the complex laws and tax policies and needs verbal intelligence to know how to communicate well.
The correlation still remains strong and still remains relevant. All Shawn has demonstrated is that he doesn’t like the correlation. If he can prove the correlation is false, then he should do some peer-reviewed research that proves his hypothesis. Until then, his empty speculations are simply mindless complaining by an ideologue.
We must base our conclusions on the known facts. Numerous studies have confirmed the correlation Kanazawa has made. There are also conservative psychological researchers. If they disagree with Kanazawa, I’m sure the liberal psychological researchers would welcome quality peer-reviewed research to further understanding of this issue. To put it simply, put up or shut up.
Deary, Batty, & Gale
Schoon, Cheng, Deary, Batty, & Gale
Change in the Conservative Personality Equals Change in the Offender with a Resultant Reduction in Recidivism
Parsons & Parsons
Marmalade 
It seems to me that Mr. Cardin simply doesn’t like different learning, whether learning ability, learning skilll or intelligence. It seems to me that in a system of his, one would either be a genius or a dunce.
Following from that and using one of your examples, it will not be difficult for someone to make a mathematical model of music. But would he be able to adequately communicate that uncanny part of music, which is undoubtedly a talent? This hypothetical example shows us that though the conventional intelligence measurement tools may say ‘intelligent’, the guy is not really a genius, we can say he is cheating.
I agree with your ‘general intelligence’ but could it not be a separate category altogether? An attribute by which access is made to the attributes you mentioned under it? So that, when a person has it, the person has greater potential to develop the attributes? We could say so from observation but it could be just an illusion when in actuality, it is an attribute like willpower or motivation that is actually influential.
To add to the Cardin problem, from everyday observation, we see people like you, and me, who easily grasp an issue when it’s in chart form with at least some little text, for guidance, and how much they can glean from that chart while some just struggle to make head and tail of it. This may be simply trivial knowledge but it counts. Some people are just so good at cartography, puzzles, patterns. Maybe, these people have had less brain evolution if we consider that verbal language is very recent. I don’t like Mr. Cardin’s sentiment one bit, perhaps I’m being over-sensitive and seeing things but he can’t say that different learning styles is moot. That’s what he means, he doesn’t care whether it is ‘intelligence’ or it is learning style, he just doesn’t like it.
I can take his argument that it would make people complacent in their different ability and perhaps, the educators might emphasize certain information domains for various people which would just increase the complacency. But,
1. Humans naturally find a means to adapt. If you’re an all-rounder, that’s good but, if not, you most assuredly will emphasize some part of yourself or the other. It’s just like different actors with different styles, they find the most adaptive, that is, either comfortable or successful, and use it or them.
2. If we want to cut down on the complacency then we need a new kind of security agency ‘the intelligence watchdogs’ who’ll follow people around and make sure they aren’t emphasizing and being complacent. We can say that at least develop them more broadly in training as a good foundation, later, they can do what they want, but is it fair?
The emphasis is placed on differences for more judicious use of talent. Why can’t the emphasis be put on both differences and similarities?
“It seems to me that Mr. Cardin simply doesn’t like different learning, whether learning ability, learning skilll or intelligence. It seems to me that in a system of his, one would either be a genius or a dunce.”
To be fair, I must admit I don’t know Cardin’s full position. Cardin does teach as I understand, but I’ve never come across a description by him of how he teaches or how he thinks it would be optimal to teach.
I wasn’t intending my response to be a criticism of Cardin, but I can now see how it could be taken that way. I suppose I was being generally critical in bringing up other viewpoints. On the other hand, I was defending the element of Cardin’s view which involves general intelligence. I was hoping to find a balanced position.
The closest I get to being overtly critical to Cardin’s view is in sharing my own experience of learning differently. However, even there, I try to clearly differentiate multiple intelligences from learning styles, defending the latter while remaining neutral to the former. Plus, I try to differentiate knowledge from practice. Even if multiple intelligences theory is valid, there remains the problem that apparently there is no research backing it up, particularly in terms of it being helpful for education.
“I agree with your ‘general intelligence’ but could it not be a separate category altogether? An attribute by which access is made to the attributes you mentioned under it? So that, when a person has it, the person has greater potential to develop the attributes? We could say so from observation but it could be just an illusion when in actuality, it is an attribute like willpower or motivation that is actually influential.”
You seem to be getting at something similar to what I was trying to communicate. It seems to me that general intelligence and multiple intelligences both have merit as theories, even if it isn’t always clear how they might apply to practice. Anyway, both theories make sense of my own experience and observations and make sense of the data I’ve come across so far.
For me, the questions are as follows: What is the relation between general intelligence and multiple intelligences? And what is the relation between different multiple intelligences? It’s in discerning those connections that knowledge could be translated into practice.
“To add to the Cardin problem, from everyday observation, we see people like you, and me, who easily grasp an issue when it’s in chart form with at least some little text, for guidance, and how much they can glean from that chart while some just struggle to make head and tail of it. This may be simply trivial knowledge but it counts. Some people are just so good at cartography, puzzles, patterns. Maybe, these people have had less brain evolution if we consider that verbal language is very recent.”
That relates to one issue I was uncertain about. What exactly is verbal intelligence? I would assume I’d test high on verbal intelligence now, but I wouldn’t have as a kid. I’m the same person with the same genetics and same brain. The only thing that changed was that I used other cognitive abilities to compensate for traditional ways of learning reading and writing. I suppose this could be put into the framework of Gardner’s multiple intelligences. It could be interpreted that I was using my ‘spatial’ intelligence (i.e., pattern-seeking ability) to connect similar words so as to compensate for word recall issues.
Besides, the hypothesis of multiple intelligences doesn’t stand or fall just on Gardner’s theory. I’m sure there are other theories of multiple intelligences. The fact that the human mind has multiple abilities and processes isn’t a radical notion.
“I don’t like Mr. Cardin’s sentiment one bit, perhaps I’m being over-sensitive and seeing things but he can’t say that different learning styles is moot. That’s what he means, he doesn’t care whether it is ‘intelligence’ or it is learning style, he just doesn’t like it.”
That is where I was less clear in reading Cardin’s view. He was obviously criticizing multiple intelligences or at least Gardner’s theory, but I wasn’t sure he was dismissing the validity and usefulness of different learning styles. You could be right that he sees the two aspects as part of the same thing so that his views of the latter would necessarily flow from his views of the former. I can’t say either way as he hasn’t responded to my response to clarify his own position.
“Why can’t the emphasis be put on both differences and similarities?”
That is basically the question I was asking in my lengthy analysis.
Yes, that is basically the question. Besides, trying to make more light of the ideas you put forward, I wanted to draw attention to Mr. Cardin’s posture. But, let me be clear: it isn’t Mr. Cardin’s posture per se, he is just a reference, it is simply the ideas and their implications that bother me. Anyway, I have faith in alternative educators to still run with learning styles or multiple intelligences theories
I can agree with that. It is the ideas and their implications that also bother me. I too have faith in alternative educators. In fact, I have general faith in humanity to figure out such things and in particular I have faith in researchers and experts to clarify these issues.
One other important thing to consider is society is more concerned with producing ‘citizens’ than with really educating. They want to produce comparable people. Example: let’s say an exam which we both write. Now, the teacher identifies a trait in me that I respond better to encouraging marking so instead of saying ‘wrong’, he encourages by commending my good parts while trying to get me to ‘correct’. In spite of that, I am still wrong. Now, you are not affected and can be told ‘wrong’ and your marks are less, it’s a positive influence to you nevertheless.
In traditional education, this is unacceptable because “who is the better?” which is actually “who is the better citizen?” – this is related to my comment on your post about Fortean, liberal e.t.c. because they want ‘smart’ people to be citizens and most importantly, workers. On the other hand, when we individualize the education, we are actually working on the person and using his natural tendencies.
Society just wants smart citizens, comparable citizens, and not educated people. The first requirement usually leads to drop-outs while the second is always a fulfilling experience which the student is always expectant of.
The key issue I want to bring out here is society wants citizens. That is not a bad impulse however for society requires perpetuation. If we can’t tell who is better than who, how do we know the better contributors to our growth?
This is again reason for alternative education’s relevance to us.
I don’t have a problem with society helping to produce citizens (“perpetuation” as you describe it), just as long as they are well-educated and freethinking citizens. I understand what you are getting at. Once again, it’s about finding balance and about finding win/win scenarios. How can each and every individual benefit while all individuals collectively as society also benefit?
I’ve often wondered what kind of system would create the most effective alternative education. But I’ve never come to any conclusion. I’m supportive of public education and US public education is relatively decent in most states, although that isn’t to say I’m against private schools. Public and private, there is always much more room for improvement. My liberal mentality is always wondering about how we can collectively improve as a society and how we can do so by helping individuals (in the way they can best be helped as unique individuals).
Hello, gentlemen. 9Or at least I’m assuming that Fate is a gentleman; apologies if I’m wrong.) I find your responses to my post fascinating and well worth reading, not least because, as Benjamin clearly point sout — and as is obvious from the content and tenor of your response anyway — you’re responding not just to what I wrote, nor solely to the NPR report on criticisms of the learning styles approach, but to the wider context of research and experiences in which these things are situated.
I can instantly clear up one unclarity: I do not oppose/hate/despise or disagree with the idea of learning styles per se. Rather, the target of my disagreement is, yes, the theory of multiple intelligences, which has always been associated with, and which in fact is mainly responsible for spawning, the current craze for tailoring educational praxis to different learning styles. I’m aware that I conflated the two in my blog post, and although that conflation wasn’t unconscious, upon rereading my words and the material I quoted from NPR and the CHRONICLE I do wish I had included a sentence to clarify what I’m clarifying here.
To diagnose or classify my own self in terms of learning styles, I’m primarily a visual-verbal learner with an auditory-verbal bent coming in a close second. I’ve taught for 10 years, first high school and now college, and the idea that different people are better suited, equipped, slanted, however you want to say it, to acquire knowledge and skills in different ways is pretty patently obvious. What’s not obvious, though — as you’ve done a nice job of helping to hash out here, Benjamin — is the idea that this corresponds to what ought to be considered different types of intelligence. The idea that it this *is* the case has, in my view, been a source of serious, damaging malpractice in the way educators are trained and the way formal education and schooling are carried out here in the U.S., for reasons touched on in my original post.
On a slightly different note, the brash/inflammatory/tabloidish tone of the headline I gave to the post was intentional, and was meant to indicate that I was as much ranting as making a serious point. In any event, it has started a serious conversation, and I’m glad to read the results.
Hello, Matt. Your clarification is most welcome. I was assuming that you probably “do not oppose/hate/despise or disagree with the idea of learning styles per se.” But it’s good to have you state it in no uncertain terms.
“Rather, the target of my disagreement is, yes, the theory of multiple intelligences, which has always been associated with, and which in fact is mainly responsible for spawning, the current craze for tailoring educational praxis to different learning styles.”
The central issue for me was that the educational praxis so tailored hasn’t been proven to be effective. Why not research it first and then see what the results are? If it truly is effective, then research will show that. It’s very odd that it hasn’t undergone scientific scrutiny. Education should be about actual results which means actually helping students learn. I don’t necessarily care about any particular theory or ideology.
I’m sure there are methods of teaching to different learning styles, but I wouldn’t claim to know what they are. Maybe no one knows at present. That is all the more reason we should have further research. The danger of education is that it becomes an experimental ground for people to implement their favored ideology/theory. This can be seen in red states where conservatives have changed the curriculum to fit their ideology. And, on the liberal side, this can be seen in examples such as Gardner’s theory. There is nothing wrong with putting forth a hypothesis, just as long as it is tested.
I didn’t mind your headline. That was fine by me. I assumed your post was argument partly based on your personal opinion and so being presented in a more informal manner.
As you know, I like Howard Gardner’s theory very much not because it makes nonsense of or replaces traditional intelligence but because it extends traditional intelligence – as Ben says, general and multiple intelligences. I’ve been confused however by this, is it that Gardner’s theory is taken to propound different intelligences for different people without a general intelligence attribute, thus killing the notion of traditional intelligence? I’m very surprised cos that’s how it appears right now. As I said, I took it as an extension of trad. intelligence but it seems others didn’t. Okay, which came first between styles and intelligences? Even if they’re different entirely, I think intelligences could serve as explanation for styles.
By the way, Mr. Cardin was very harshly done by Fate (pun intended). I can see Fate’s beef; the issue at all our minds is “what about all the wrecked lives if we get it wrong?”