Week 4: Learning styles

Useful post by tutor Don Passey summarising learning styles:

"For me there are at least three sets of processes to consider when we are discussing or thinking about 'learning styles':

• The ways we engage with information, ideas, and the outside world, whether we acquire information through visual, auditory, emotional, social, or through other sensory routes;
• The ways we handle information internally, whether we are concerned with concepts and a big picture, or a more detailed or atomistic approach, whether we are positivistic or pragmatic, for example;
• The ways we hold information or details or ideas in mind, in mental schema formats, whether these are in moving colour imagery forms, or sounds, and how ideas are associated and linked to these mental schema so that when we remember some details, we are taken to other ideas associated with them as well.

For me, when I'm considering 'learning styles' it is a matter of trying to see what is happening across all of those dimensions, and individuals do differ quite a lot. We also know at a neurobiological level that mental schema develop or shift (language learning, for example, is different for younger children because of the neurobiological schema that are accessible at an earlier stage in life), but we also know that mental schema can be created when they are lost for some reason (following trauma or brain injury, for example).

For me 'learning styles' is something I consider as highly multidimensional. All of the features and factors you have described are important contributors, and different research studies point to these clearly.

If this is an area of interest, it might be worth looking at some of the literature on mental schema - I think that provides an important neurobiological perspective that helps to see how the psychological and cognitive might relate at an individual level.

This might offer a starting point: Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social
cognition (2nd ed.).New York, NY: McGraw Hill International Editions"

Week 4: The issue of quality in qualitative reserach

Hammersley (2007) The issue of quality in qualitative research. 

Available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17437270701614782

Focus: Examines whether criteria are necessary and considers whether a single set of criteria is achievable.


Problems with qualitative research:

• Criticised for not servin evidence-based practice well
• Argument that there is no clearly defined set of quality criteria available for judging it, ' so that it is of uncertain quality'

This assumes that:

• There are already clearly defined criteria of quality for quantitative research
• That explicit assessment criteria are needed

Problem faced by lay users e.g. policymakers and practitioners):

• how to assess research findings in the terms in which they present themselves
• how to relate these findings to what they already know and how they normally judge validity

Importance of trust - researchers largely have to trust that other researchers have carried out their work efficiently, presented their findings honestly, that normal processes of criticism with in the research community have reduced the danger of error etc. There is no mechanism that can check independently that the knowledge they produce is sound, or even that they have pursued this knowledge in the most effective way possible. Dilemma: the whole point of research is that it may produce un-commonsensical conclusions, therefore findings must not be dismissed because they are counter-intuitive. It is not possible for researchers to make their judgements transparent, in the sense of fully intelligible to anyone, irrespective of background knowledge and experience. Indeed, there are limits to the extent to which these judgements can be made intelligible even to fellow researchers, because of the situated nature of judgement.

Paradigms

Different 'paradigms' of qualitative research (Thomas Kuhn) - i.e. qualitative research is divided by divergent theoretical, methodological and value assumptions about the nature of the phenomena being investigated and about how they can and should be researched. The differences between qualitative researchers stem from the reality that each comes from their own unique situated practice and each employs a different approach to examining the process of research. Hammersley therefore believes that 'paradigm conflict' arises from a difference in practices rather than just a 'clash of ideas'.

Max Weber (& Neo-Kantianism) believed that social scientists strive to understand 'social phenomena in their socio-historical contexts' rather than attempting to establish 'universal laws' as is the case with natural science. This is an important difference as it means that social scientists will always draw on different sets of values and assumptions about the factual nature of the social phenomena, which will inevitably bring about divisions within educational research.

Scientific method and rigour

Historical clash of opinion between researchers who believed that physics / Botany etc. provided the exemplar for scientific method and those who believed that the study of social phenomena required a very different approach. Some researchers believed that understanding social phenomena could only be achieved 'from within' in order for the researcher to fully understand the meanings and cultural references of those people being studied. This led not to a wholesale rejection of scientific method but rather to a conception of science that was better suited to studying social phenomena.

Discourse analysts vs ethnographers

It is often the belief of Discourse Analysts that readers must be presented with the data to enable them to form their own opinions as to the validity of the data. Some also state that what is inferred must not go beyond what can be 'observed' in the collected data. This differs from the argument made by many ethnographers that it is not possible to make all the data available to readers, and that the accuracy and relevance of their observations is wholly dependent upon their successful observation and interpretation of the culture of the people being studied.

Realism vs constructionism

Constructionists believe that social phenomena

• 'do not exist independently of people's understandings of them, that those understandings play a crucial generative role'
• 'are culturally constituted and can only be understood by describing the processes by which they are culturally constituted as the things they are'

This means that the social phenomena, their causes and effects are no longer the focus of investigation. Rather it is the processes by which they are identified and in effect created through identification by culture members' that becomes the goal of enquiry.

Conclusions

• There is a need to try and reduce the significant differences in perspective of approaches to social science research in order to try and establish guidelines for what is and is not good quality work.
• The plurality of methodological approaches and respective criteria for what constitutes 'quality' should not simply be accepted unquestioningly. 

Searching the literature

Wallace and Wray (20020 categorise the literature you are likely to encounter:

• theoretical literature. Remember: a theory is just a theory. Look critically at the evidence on which it is based and the claims is makes and make your own assessment of the quality of the theory provided.

• research literature: reports of systematic investigations undertaken in response to a specific research question. The research question will often arise from theory in an attempt to prove or disprove it. Reviews of research by other authors are useful as they allow you to see a study in the context of others.

• practice literature

• policy literature

What is a literature review?

A literature review is the comprehensive study and interpretation of literature that relates to a particular topic (Aveyard 2007). It must relate to a specific question for which an answer is then sought by searching and analysing existing literature that has bee written about the subject referred to in the question. A literature review should bring together all relevant pieces of literature on a topic and ensure that no one piece is seen in isolation. If you think of each piece of literature as one piece of a jigsaw, a literature review represents the finished puzzle with each piece of literature contributing to the whole picture.

The initial literature review will most likely inform the development and refining of your overall research question, so expect to go back and forth between the two.

Purpose

• to find out everything that everybody else has ever known about the problem/issue

• to find out who did what, how far they got, what mistakes they made

• to understand the questions that have been asked in previous research in your field to help you clarify the questions that you wish to answer

A literature review should provide a critical account of the literature in order to demonstrate why a new research study is required. Not all literature reviews are undertaken at the beginning of a study. There are two ways to approach a literature review:

• As a preliminary investigation prior to undertaking primary data collection. The reasons for this are:

1. to establish what is already known about your chosen topic and to demonstrate a gap in the knowledge base - this gives you the rationale for undertaking your research
2. to identify which research methods have been used by previous researchers who have undertaken research in this area. When you read the literature, look at researchers' evaluations of what went well and what not so well as this will help you shape and design your own methodology

• As the entire focus of your research. Your entire approach may be to systematically and critically examine the literature around your chosen topic in order to arrive at a new insight or perspective

You will need to clearly signpost what you are doing and why - don't assume that the reader knows anything.

Approach

The review must be undertaken in a planned, methodical and systematic way. You will need to:

• Define the scope of the review. Establish the scope of the literature that you are going to include. Select only literature that has a direct relation to your literature review. If you do not you review will become too large and you will be unable to focus on the questions you are aiming to address, e.g.
• understanding the term 'community'
• relationship/power dynamics and roles in a community
• communities of learners
• online communities in higher education
• communities of practice in higher education

• Define the terms. E.g. define 'community' and 'course' in the context of your study, e.g.
• community
• course (i.e. does this include all the support departments involved)
• students
• social structure
• structuralist
• post-structuralist

Structure

1. Identify a well-defined question to guide your literature review
2. Develop a systematic searching strategy to guide the collection of literature for your review
3. Critically assess the quality of the literature and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each piece of evidence
4. Combine the evidence and draw all the individual components together in such a way as to shed new light on the topic, more that can be achieved by simply reviewing the individual pieces of literature
5. Reiterate at the end of the review the purpose for undertaking the review (i.e. if it was to identify a gap in the literature then state this; if it was to identify suitable research methods to use then state this)

Research skills

 

Just watched the Epigeum video on Research Skills and it raised some useful questions to think about:

• Where is the research going to take me?
• Where do I want to make a difference?
• Where do I want to have an impact?

Make the most of the research skills training workshops that are available to PhD students.

Week 3: Learning Styles critique (Reynolds, N.D.)

Cognitive Styles and Alternatives

Gordon Pask (1976) identified two learning strategies:

• holist: learning in relation to the 'whole'. Pask described these as 'comprehension learners'
• serialist: a more detailed, step-by-step approach from one idea to the next/ Pask called these 'operation learners'

Pask identified a third style - 'versatility' -which was maintained as the best. Such learners showed an ability to use either strategy when necessary.

Research then began to place more emphasis on the 'conscious choices' made in selecting an approach to a learning task. This led to Marton & Saljo (1976) describing two 'levels of processing' > deep and surface. Marton & Saljo (1976) see approach to learning as context-dependent rather than as an indication of personality, a theme strongly advocated by Laurillard 1979) who concluded that students chose learning strategies based on their perceptions of the nature of the subject matter to be learned.

The conditions in which people learn also affects whether they adopt a 'deep' or' surface' approach.  

Surface learning occurs due to:

• anxiety (Fransson, 1977)
• heavy workload (Ramsden & Entwhistle, 1981)
• assessment methods which reward reproduction of information rather than evidence of deeper understanding (Dart & Clarke, 1991)

Deep learning occurs when:

• subject matter is relevant to students' interests (Fransson, 1977)
• teacher is supportive and enthusiastic (Ramsden, 1979)
• students have opportunities to manage their own learning (Ransden & Entwhistle, 1981)

Question: do differences in a student's learning approach reflect a characteristic of personality or a conscious choice among possible strategies resulting from the individual's perception of the nature of the learning task & its social and institutional context?

The critical theorists raise more fundamental questions about the place given to notions of learning style of any kind.

 

Learning Styles: a Critical Perspective

N.B. from Getting to grips with Assessment - Brown & Smith. Authors state that 'Assessment should be free of bias...assessment methods as far as possible should be varied to support different learning styles and abilities...."

According to Reynolds, adult and professional education (andragogy) focuses predominantly on method and technique and the development of the 'whole person' using participation and experiential learning methods. However the author believes that andragogy - or 'self-directed learning' - does not place sufficient importance on the social or historical context of learning. Reynolds cites Henry Giroux (1981) who was critical of a learner-centred approach in the classroom, believing that it denied the reality of 'power and privilege' that are characteristic of the real-world. Giroux believed that while such an approach might lead to happier learners it risks denying them the opportunity to explore and experience power relationships that they will have to negotiate in their own social context outside of the classroom.

Question (me): how far should tutors go to accommodate the learning styles of their students?
Question (Reynolds): Does the very concept of learning styles eclipse the notion that people learn differently according to their social context and background?

Reynolds highlights a case study of Navajo children who were reluctant to engage in classroom discussion. An analysis using learning styles classifications did not provide any useful insights on how to elicit greater participation, reducing the students' abilities along with their opportunities to learn. But when the questions were 'contextualised' - i.e. focused on issues that were of importance to Navajo culture - the children's participation increased significantly along with their analytical skills. Research highlighted the importance of situating learning within a relevant social context and the risk of decontextualising the learning process.

Question (me): to what extent does the 'professional' context of students on the PhD programme supercede their 'socil-political' context?
Question (me): how do tutors on the PhD programme negotiate the diverse contexts of the cohort?

Reynolds cites Welton's (1987) belief that in adult education there is too great an emphasis on psychology and the individual with too little acknowledgement of the way in which the social reality of power and privilege impacts on how people learn and develop.

Question (Reynolds): does a decontextualised and depoliticised approach to education reinforce discrimination on grounds of difference?

Reynolds believes that the learning style approach changes development practice both indirectly, by decontextualising learning, and directly by causing a vocabulary of discrimination to be used under the guise of 'educational practice'. The concept of learning styles risks reinforcing social inequality in the workplace through encouraging workers to think in stereotypes and 'trivialising human complexity' (Kolb, 1984). Reynolds also suggests that the learning styles approach could be interpreted as favourable to the politics of 'multi-culturalism', where culture is depoliticised and the social importance of difference is replaced by 'gestures of acceptance, interest or concern' by the more powerful majority. While appearing to welcome racial and gender differences learning style theory fails to acknowledge the power relations that have given rise to just such social inequality.

In attempting to measure the differences in how people approach learning there is a risk of compounding inequality by failing to acknowledge the social nature of difference.

Making conferencing work - Ben Plumpton (OU)

2. Why do courses use online conferencing?

• Helps distance learners stay motivated and understand that other students are often struggling with the same issues as you
• Obliges students to work together online - increasingly mirrors the workplace
• Group working tends to promote deeper understanding and better critical thinking

3. What's in it for me?

• You get support when you need it (in exchange for giving support to others);
• You have a richer vein of experience to draw on, because you can pool examples,
  references etc;
• Very often a group can produce better work than an individual. One person might put
  forward a thought or idea, often not completely formed or finished, someone else
  picks up on it and takes it forward, that sparks off more ideas in others, and between
  them the group creates something much better than any could have done on their own;
• Learning by 'talking' is more powerful for most people than learning by reading - you
  think about things more deeply, and are likely to remember things better;
• The best way to check your own understanding is to explain it to others. Explaining
  things for your fellow students is good practice for the kind of explanations you'll
  probably have to do in assignments.

4. What is an effective conference like? How can you tell whether your conference is working well?

• Everyone participates, and everyone feels confident they will be 'listened to';
• It is a supportive community, because people have come to trust each other, and 'look out for' each other whilst respecting differences;
• The group has typically worked through shared experience and/or fought shared 'enemies' (such as software problems!);
• Everyone facilitates sometimes - taking some responsibility for discussions and activities, and for encouraging and helping others;
• Everyone takes initiative sometimes - asking questions and starting discussions, not being passive and waiting to be told what to do;
• Arguments happen - people feel safe enough to challenge and disagree, which helps everyone to think and learn;
• Everyone writes carefully, putting their points clearly and constructively, and the structure of the discussions is obvious and easy to follow;
• People trust others to respect their words, to put a good interpretation on them and not 'steal' or misquote them.

5. What can I do to help make my conference 'work'?

• Get involved and make a commitment. This means contributing regularly, putting some time and effort. If you can't be very active, let people know.
• Help people get to know you. People need to feel they can trust each other to be able to 'risk' putting forward ideas.
• Construct your messages well
• Use threading properly
• Be clear what the point you are making is
• Give reasons for your opinions
• Invite responses to your messages e.g. "Do you agree with me here?"
• Take some responsibility - e.g. help keep things going, start discussions without being told to, watch out for people being ignored and help them.

6. What sorts of things to conferences do?

• Social conversation - a bit of social conversation helps the group to work better
• Getting and giving help
• Group work and projects - needs participants to have a feeling of shared responsibility
• Discussion - two main benefits:
• by pooling everyone's expertise & knowledge you end up with a much better understanding of a subject.
• by articulating our ideas, challenging other people's views and being challenged we modify and refine our own views.

How does a discussion work?

• Typically you start with a discussion question or topic, posed by a tutor or perhaps by one of the group.
• Generally one or more people will offer their views on the question. If it stops there, that is not a discussion, just a list of opinions. Everyone needs to take responsibility for moving on.
• The way to move on is to draw each other out, by asking questions like "What evidence is there that...." or "Why do you think that..... " or "What do you mean by....".
• The next thing is to find areas of agreement or disagreement, so you'd be saying things like "I agree/disagree about ..... because......" or "But what if ....." or "On the other hand ...... because....". Giving reasons is important - in academic discussion you generally need to back up your view using evidence, references or examples, rather than making assertions. Don't be too defensive about your opinions if people disagree - the discussion is not a competition to be the most 'right', it is a co-operative effort to improve everyone's understanding. And it's OK to change your mind once you hear other arguments! 
• Aim to build on what other people have said, to separate opinion from fact and to look for areas the group has not covered. Try to look at an issue from multiple angles e.g. you might think about 'who what why when where', or advantages and disadvantages of suggestions, or problems and barriers.

As the discussion progresses, especially if it is lively and interesting, it can get hard to keep
track of and remember where you are going. There starts to be a need for someone to make
sense of it all. Sometimes your tutor or conference moderator will take on that role, but it is
something that everyone can start to do, as part of 'taking responsibility'. The sort of things
that are useful are:

• Summarising - bringing all the important points from a discussion together into a concluding overview. A good summary will highlight decisions and areas of agreement, and acknowledge individual contributions (e.g. "Jo said ..... and Jill made the point that ...."), but without becoming an enormously long and detailed list. 
• Refocusing - pulling the discussion back if it gets too far off-topic e.g. "We seem to have strayed from the point here..."
• Weaving - pulling together threads and ideas, looking for patterns, linking the discussion into the course materials and beyond, identifying holes, opening up new avenues and moving on. Weaving goes beyond summarising, and a dynamic discussion may need several 'weaves' as it goes along. Imagine all the threads of the conference being brought together as coloured strands of wool and woven into a pattern, perhaps including some gold and silver strands from outside. Some examples of weaving comments might be: "We've looked at ..... and ....., but there's the whole issue of ..... which fits in .....", or "When we talked about ..... we thought that ..... but I've just seen an article which says ..... How can we incorporate .....", or "What if we took the idea of ..... and applied it to .....".

The experience of participating in a conference that is really 'constructing knowledge' through
discussion can be amazing. You feel a greater ownership of the conference, which leads to
greater commitment, which leads us to where we began in section 5, with the importance of
getting involved and playing an active part in your conference.

7. Handling particular problems

a) "I don't know what to say!"

Here are some suggestions to get you started with contributing to a conference: 

• Look for other people's messages that you agree with, and say so, perhaps adding your own examples;
• Look for messages that gave you ideas you hadn’t thought of, or that set you thinking about something, and let them know;
• Ask a question about something you don't fully understand, and hopefully someone will help you out. Don't worry about asking 'silly' questions, there will probably be several other people with the same worry, and you'll have done them a favour by asking;
• If someone asks a question you wanted to ask, help them feel less silly by saying you'd like to know the answer too;
• If someone asks something you think you know a bit about, answer it. The very best way to check you know something is to try and explain it to someone else!
• If someone asks a question that you can't help with, but no-one seems to be answering, you can at least offer your sympathy and maybe suggest other sources of help.

Writing your first messages may seem awkward, but if you keep on doing it, conferencing
will quickly come to feel quite natural. 

b) "Am I saying too much?"

Probably not. The people who worry about this are usually the very people who hold a
conference together! There is no time pressure as there might be in a face-to-face discussion,
so even if one person says a lot, there is still 'space' for everyone else. Don't worry unless:

• over half the messages are from you, and
• your messages are mainly offering your opinions rather than engaging in dialogue with others.

If someone is a bit overwhelming, other people can think 'Oh they'll answer that, I won't
bother trying', and lose interest. If you think this is happening, then maybe you could hold
back a bit, e.g.:

• Encourage other people to participate, e.g. by tactfully emailing them to suggest something you think they could contribute;
• If you see a question you think you could answer, wait another day and see if someone else answers it;
• Show you welcome response to your messages, e.g. "What do other people think?"; Ask for help in the conference with something you are less confident about, so people can see you don't know everything.

c) "Not everyone is participating"

• Do what you can to encourage your other group members to join in, e.g. by private email, and find out when they expect to participate, or whether they have decided not to. Accept their reasons and apologies with good grace. It's best not to use guilt-tripping ("You are letting us down"), it rarely works!
• Is there anything you can be getting on with while you are waiting for a response?
• Consider whether you can arrange the group work so that people who are behind can do some of the later tasks.
• If some group members don't participate and don't respond to enquiries, accept that you'll have to manage without them, and don't waste time or emotional energy worrying or waiting for them. You shouldn’t compromise your ability to keep to your schedule and complete your work on time.
• Try discussing the activity in such an exciting way that the others will be drawn in to participating anyway - the chances are that they are reading the discussions.
• Try to be sensitive to others who may be trying to catch up with an activity that is already half-completed - it's not easy for them to join in an established group, so offer what support you can.

The good side of this is that by participating you will learn a lot more and probably do better
in your course assessment than people who don't. 

d) "I've got behind and there's too much to read"

If you don't have time to read all the messages, don't try! Use the message subjects and
senders to decide which to read. Read any introductory messages explaining what the
conference is about and telling you what the group is working on (generally these will
be from the tutor or moderator);

• Don't worry too much about discussions or activities which have finished. Maybe read any obvious concluding or summarising messages, but concentrate on the current activities;
• Send a short message announcing your presence and apologising for the delay;
• Just read messages for a little while, so you get the feel of the conference and understand what's going on;
• If you're not quite sure what has been discussed already, acknowledge this in your messages e.g. "Apologies if you've already covered this, but ...."

e) "Nobody is saying anything!"

A conference can be quite a fragile thing. If no-one says anything for a while, it becomes
harder and harder to break the silence, and no-one feels like being the first to contribute.
There can be a downward spiral until the conference becomes completely dormant. Someone
needs to be brave and break the spiral as soon as they realise what is happening. Here are
some suggestions for things you can do at this point:

• Ask a question that prompts a response, e.g. "Can anyone explain the bit where it says...";
• Respond if anyone else tries to break the silence; 
• Conspire with someone else to get an argument going - take sides on an issue and debate it vigorously, with appeals to the rest of the group to join each 'side';
• Start a discussion on something crucial to the course, e.g. how to tackle the next assignment, or prepare for an exam. 

8. Conclusion

In summary, to get the most out of conferencing on your course, you need to participate fully.
This will take time and effort but it's worth it! A group that helps and supports each other,
brings a variety of thoughts, examples and perspectives together, and challenges and builds on
each other's ideas, will make a big difference to your enjoyment and understanding of the
course, and hopefully also to your achievement in the course. The key things to remember are
to:

• Get involved and make a commitment;
• Help people get to know you;
• Construct your messages well, and
• Take some responsibility.

You can't do this theoretically, the only way to do it is to have a go, make mistakes and enjoy
yourself in the process. In the end, the more you put in, the more you will get out.