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Session Summary
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Learner Centered Education
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Learning Styles
Lynn Curry, Ph.D.
CurryCorp Inc.
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The session
began with a discussion of the difference
between educational preference and
educational style. Style was then elaborated
into affective, cognitive and learning
styles.
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We then
reviewed what is known about style and
preference as applied to medical
education: |
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There are
reliable cognitive style differences
across medical specialties. |
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Among the
specialties, family medicine, surgery
and psychiatry are consistently
differentiable. |
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There are
reliable cognitive style differences
within specialties depending on their
practice type (university:
teaching-tertiary/ quaternary care
versus community: primary care based). |
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Age and
gender have an effect on cognitive and
learning styles and instructional format
preference. |
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Cognitive
style has an effect on academic
performance. |
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Learning
style differs across specialties. |
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Surface
approaches to learning style are common
across all four years of medical school. |
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Surface
approaches to learning style are
negatively related to performance.
Achieving, strategic or deep approaches
are positively related to performance. |
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Instructional
format preferences differ across
specialties. |
A range of ways
to apply style and preference in medical
education was presented:
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help
learners understand their own styles and
become more effective self regulating
learners |
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let
instructors know the range of styles and
preferences in their classes and help
them develop alternative instructional
strategies |
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work on
style flexibility with both learners and
faculty |
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use style
information to assist with year over
year retention issues |
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use style
information to address issues of
underserved specialties and geographic
regions |
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use style
information to assist with recruitment
and retention of cultural diversity
among students and faculty |
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use style
information to inform testing
conditions. |
Flaws in the
style and preference literature were
reviewed:
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conceptual
confusion |
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over-generalization
based on measurement of one isolated
construct, often assessed on only one
occasion and with only one instrument. |
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assigning
participants to treatment conditions
before completely assessing them for
complex constructs. |
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using
median or modal scores to divide
participants into two equal groups
rather than selecting participants from
only the extremes of the contrasting
bipolar ranges. |
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insufficient
independence between instructor and
researcher/ evaluator. |
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little
variation in the interventions
purportedly matched to style. |
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only one or
sometimes no independent measure of
behavior change. |
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no attempt
to control for interacting and
confounding variables such as gender,
IQ, ability or initial capability in
target behavior, time-on-task, and
teacher expectation. |
The session
concluded with a review of where style
contributes to the basic sciences of
education.
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Most
teaching/ learning interventions can be
improved by better applying the basic
sciences of education. |
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There are
specific knowledge, skills and attitudes
required to master the basic sciences in
education. |
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As with
anything else, information and an
opportunity to practice with feedback
are essential to mastery. |
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The basic
educational sciences apply to each step
in the educational cycle: |
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Communicate
clear learning objectives
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Justify
those objectives by tight connection
to post-instruction application
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Match
learning objective with appropriate
instructional and assessment
modalities
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Provide
detailed feedback to learners on
mastery results
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Provide
guidance on where to focus next (next
learning objectives)
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Provide
encouragement to maintain engagement
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Attention
to issues of style and preference can
assist both teachers and learners in
each of those basic educational skills. |
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Slides from this Presentation
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