Here is the second of five “How to Study Videos for your students (and you). It’s called, “What Students Should Know About How People Learn”
(The first one is here.)
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The Harold Lounge 
This was a fascinating little video. In addition to the main claim of the video, the point about different learning styles at 5m38sec was provocative. For those that didn’t see the video, he claims that there is no good research to support the validity of learning styles. The point was short and somewhat ambiguous (people don’t truly have different learning styles? tailoring lessons to different learning styles is ineffective in learning information? tailoring lessons to different learning styles is ineffective in the overall growth of a learner? All of the above?), but I constantly hear teachers and students preach the mantra of learning styles, both to advocate certain forms of teaching, and to excuse themselves from learning a particular lesson. Rarely have I heard these individuals reflect on the validity of such claims. Is this a mere dogmatism? Fascinating.
The problem is that the teaching community is way behind the research community. The theories of different learning styles began sometime in the 1960’s, took off in the 70’s and 80’s, then kind of died away as there was no evidence found to support the claim that teaching with respect to students’ different learning styles had any effect on student learning or achievement. Because teachers and administrators in K-12 and community colleges tend not to be researchers, it’s hard to keep up with the new theories of learning that are being developed, tested and shown to be effective.