It was only her first semester at the University, but Engineering student Katie Brown was already struggling in math.
"I had to switch out because I thought that I was going to fail the class because I couldn't relate to the way the teacher was teaching," Brown said.
Her troubles started, she explained, with a teacher who was not compatible with her style of learning.
"What does it mean when a student says, 'You know what? I just don't get it with this teacher?'" Cognitive Psychology Prof. Daniel Willingham asked.
This question is at the core of the modality theory of learning, more commonly known as different learning styles. Do students learn in a variety of manners, including audio, visual and kinesthetic styles, and is their learning affected when a teacher caters to a particular style?
Willingham pointed out in his article, "Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?" that "children do differ in their abilities with different modalities, but teaching the child in his best modality doesn't affect his educational achievement." Instead, the content should drive the choice of teaching style. For example, a music class lends itself to auditory learning, whereas a chemistry class would be better taught with hands-on experiments for kinesthetic learning.
For Brown, math could have been approached from a more appropriate angle as well.
"I like it when teachers ask if we have any questions on the homework because then I'll know how to do something even if I can't figure it out on my own." Brown said. "It furthers my learning."
When her math teacher taught in a more lecture-style manner in which the students rarely contributed their own input, Brown realized she was struggling and needed a change.
Willingham explained that most memories are stored according to their meanings, not into seeing, hearing and touching categories. People can remember the gist of a story while not remembering the exact images or sentences that made up the story. Still, the mind can store memories according to visual, auditory and kinesthetic categories along with their meanings, such as when people are asked to recall certain images or sounds.
In his article, Willingham wrote, "The different visual, auditory and meaning-based representations in our minds cannot serve as substitutes for one another," because certain methods of storing are more effective for certain types of information. Visualizing a word like "genius" would be more difficult for most than remembering its meaning, whereas visualizing a "red apple" would be easier.
Despite the current lack of evidence pointing to beneficial effects of catering to a student's learning style, students such as Brown have been affected by a professor's clashing or corresponding methods of instruction.
Third-year College student Tim Reichart expressed his personal preference for learning and teaching as a teaching assistant this semester.
"I learn best when I hear something, and especially if I get a chance to repeat it -- either to explain it to someone else or go over it in a study group," Reichart said, adding that repetition helps him commit the information to memory, especially when there's a large volume of facts.
Reichart said the professor of the class he is a TA for teaches to the auditory learning style. This helps the students in that they are taught the material in a similar fashion by two people who think alike. The auditory learners especially respond to the listen-and-learn approach to the class.
Reichart also clarified, however, that he has had to find new ways other than his personal method to teach the material to other students.
"Sometimes I just say things out loud, but sometimes I write things on the board because some people are visual learners," Reichart said.
One visual learner, second-year College student Gloria Interrante, said she favors seeing notes and charts over just listening to her professors' lectures.
"Any time I study for anything I actually have to look at notes," Interrante said. "After lectures I have to go back and read my notes, otherwise the information won't stay or stick in my head."
Interrante also explained how she uses visual memories to recall information while taking tests.
"I picture where the information was on the page that I studied, and that helps me recall the answer," she said.
Reichart and Interrante agreed that teaching style may have affected how much they enjoyed a particular class, but neither has experienced any real problems with teachers who didn't teach to their particular style thus far. This follows Willingham's research, which states that learning styles do not have a large effect on a student's success in the classroom.
Yet the new "Thinkwell" CDs offered in various classes, including the class Reichart assists in, attempt to adapt to different student needs. In the CDs, there are video clips of professors teaching the concepts, which allows for more visual explanations not possible in textbooks.
Reichart mentioned manipulating equations and real-time demonstrations of chemicals mixing as new features of the CDs.
"It's a lot more engaging than a textbook," Reichart said. "It's interesting to see people use both or only use one depending on how they learn."
Teachers and educational psychologists continue to study the concept of different learning modalities, searching for experimental support for the theory. While some students may just have preferences, others may be more strongly dependent on personal styles of learning.
As for Brown, she's much happier with her new teacher.
"I was struggling with the quizzes and now it's a lot easier ... I'm doing well in my new learning environment," she said.
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