The Debunker Club just held the "June is Debunk Learning Styles Month," enlisting its members and the larger community of learning professionals to debunk the myth that learning styles are valuable in designing learning. Here's a review of some of the evidence we were using.
So, did we make a difference in just one short month? Well, we got lots of folks to publicize the issue.
But that's activity, not results. Do we have any evidence that we made a difference? Well, it's probably too early to tell — because this needs to be a long-term effort — but it does look like we've moved the needle.
On June 1st, only one (that's right, just one) result on Google's first two pages of search results was negative or critical of learning styles. Even the Wikipedia page devoted to learning styles was heavily weighted to portray learning styles in a positive light.
One month later (today) on July 1st, four of the search items are critical of learning styles. While this 400% increase is good, and we ought to celebrate briefly, it's still not enough! Still over 75% of the first two search pages promote bogus information.
And note, one of us edited the Wikipedia page to make criticisms of learning-styles approaches much more salient! So folks looking for unbiased information on Wikipedia will now see a much more balanced overview.
How Can You Help?
At The Debunker Club, we have three main channels of persuasion:
- We can publicize the myth of learning styles by writing blog posts, talking with our colleagues, speaking at conferences, writing articles, posting information on LinkedIn, etc. By making people aware, and generally more skeptical of myths, we encourage more critical consumption of information in the learning field.
- We can make attempts at educating those who are spreading the misinformation.
- We can provide better information — information vetted by science or rigorous evidence-based practices as proven to improve learning results.
So, continue to do all these things!
Also, to move the search indices, promote and visit websites that have information critical of learning styles.
The Debunker Club has only been around for a few months. Already we are making a difference! We must always be vigilant!
Onward! Thank you!