The Exaggeration of Learning Styles and Differentiation in the Math Classroom
If you’re like me, hearing the term “differentiation” or “learning styles” makes me cringe and my annoyance towards others climb a bit higher. Every year, education seems to develop a new term towards improving student outcomes; a new fad if you will. Differentiation seems to pop up all over in PD sessions or PLC’s. Furthermore, if you have implemented some of the common differentiation practices you can expect your work load to increase by roughly another two hours a week through your planning.
That being said, there is a bit of a half truth of differentiation that I would like to explore and how we can use it effectively in the math classroom to support student learning.
What is Differentiation?
Differentiation is the idea that we should create instruction towards each students individual needs. It assumes that all students have different “styles” of learning that they either prefer or thrive within. For example, it assumes that students are “auditory learners” or “visual learners” within the classroom, or some students are “kinesthetic” learners and need to move within the classroom in order to learn most effectively.
I want to emphasize, through this bolded text, that there is not a lot (if any) scientific evidence to support the idea of ‘learning styles’.
Learning Styles are Exaggerated or Incorrect
I have studied a ton of cognitive psychology through my undergraduate and masters program, and I have seen the research that supports that this is a widely misunderstood concept and highly exaggerated by a lot of educational technology companies. An article here explains in detail how a cognitive psychologist has researched over 10 years these ideas and has not found supporting evidence for what we interpret as ‘learning styles’.
Let me be clear on my own beliefs as well: I do think that students have needs that need to be met as a teacher. For instance, I do believe that some students benefit more from moving around the classroom or having visual cues in learning. However, I believe that ALL students benefit from these activities. I also believe that the majority of companies that highlight the effects of these ‘learning styles’ are trying to market themselves as experts in ‘learning styles’ in order to earn profits from the education sector. Let’s be real here; Zion Market Research estimated that education would be a 2.3 TRILLION dollar market by 2028. So why would companies not have the incentive to exaggerate when it comes to knowing how students learn, when we could probably assume that the majority of the individuals whom work for these companies have little to no classroom experience?
The Reality of it all
The reality of it is this: differentiation and learning styles are very exaggerated in practice. There is no need to think through every single students ‘preferred learning styles’ and add hours onto your lesson plan. Instead, we should look for the best way to present the material to students. This looks different in every classroom. For me I am a firm believer in direct instruction, especially in mathematics.
How I utilize “differentiation” and “learning styles”
Instead of depending on fitting every students individual needs, I am a firm believer that every concept in mathematics has a “most efficient way to learn this concept”. What I mean by this is that, when presenting to my classroom, there exists one presentation of material that allows the most amount of students to understand the material. Therefore, instead of spending time developing a lesson plan listing out student needs and how to act on them, I put more effort to develop a model that is the most effective way of teaching.
After the model, I utilize the “learning styles” to help plan my practice for students. I do not do a ton throughout the week, but I manage to plan at least two activities a week per class that is interactive and students can move around more.
During independent practice, students are usually able to complete problems by themselves and prepare for the exit ticket. However, in some cases there are group of students who are still struggling with the material. This is where I believe that differentiation takes place. Here I will pull a small group with students in order to assist them in learning the material, where I explain it differently to help support student learning. In my teaching, differentiation takes place during small groups, not whole group instruction. Thus when thinking about class flow, differentiation fits in like this
Model
Guided Practice (implement learning style like activities)
Independent Practice & Small Groups (Differentiation takes place here)
Lets walk through an example to show how this works.
Graphing Linear Equations
For instance, if I am teaching graphing linear equations using slope and y-intercept, then I want to use the best possible method to present the material to the students. Let me provide an example of this below.
First I would begin by direct instruction when introducing and building a new skill. Students would begin with notes.
I would have the steps explicitly listed out for students as they begin to build a capacity to remember how to graph linear equations. This way they have a reference material for later and I would reference these steps as I proceeded through.
This would be a beginning level practice problem I would begin with, walking students through each step and continually referencing the steps and their order.
We would end with this finished graph, detailed with the slope explicitly labeled. Notice, I have not used any learning style techniques here. I am presenting the material in the best way that I believe possible for students to learn the material. I would continue with two more practice problems, presenting varied ways that the slope or intercept could be different and how to deal with negatives and fractions.
For the practice portion of the lesson, this is where I begin introducing more “interactive learning”. When doing a lesson where graphical representations are needed, I prefer to do gallery walks. In this case, I would put students in groups of 3 to 4 to create graphic representations of linear equations on an anchor chart. They would have about 4 problems to graph while labeling the slope and intercept. Once they completed these they would hang the anchor charts on the wall and rotate around the classroom in groups, checking each others work and writing down observations on their worksheet of each graph. Notice in this activity students are:
Having the opportunity to move around the classroom
Engaging in group work with each other
Practicing the skill of graphing
Identifying slope and intercepts of linear equations and graphs
Understanding how to check their work
At no point is there a need to differentiate learning for each individual student, because at this point they are already receiving a variety of visual and auditory cues as well as moving around the room. Furthermore, all students are gaining these.
Afterwards, students would return to their seats for independent practice of material. However, this opens up the real opportunity for “differentiation”.
Differentiation in Small Groups
If differentiation truly exists, it exists within a small group in the classroom. Majority of the time, I do not believe that students have difficulty with presentation of the material, but rather the ability to pay attention for long periods of time. Rather than a presentation issue, we have an attention issue. Therefore, when pulling a small group I would look for students who have been struggling throughout the partner practice to engage in a bit more 1 on 1 attention. Here is where I believe that if differentiation existed, it would be here. You have the opportunity to see what the student is thinking and give them different representations of the material or examples that might stick more with them. Furthermore, you can slow down much more with students than if you were presenting material in front of the class.
Differentiation and Learning Styles are not Inherently Bad
I came off a bit strong at the start of this article, but the idea and application of learning styles and differentiation is not a bad thing. The ideas and creative methods that I have seen other teachers create are impressive and I use them all the time in my own teaching. However, as educators we need to shift our mindset around how we talk about differentiation and learning styles. To our new colleagues, this puts a lot of pressure on teachers to plan out every lesson towards each type of learner; which as we have seen can waste a ton of time. Furthermore, we should definitely not feel bad if we haven’t accommodated “all types of learners” in our lessons. We should strive for creating the best lesson possible that reaches all learners, then differentiate through small groups from there.
Let me know your thoughts as well on differentiation and learning styles. Even though I am very skeptical of them, as with most new ideas and concepts, I would love to hear how they work for you and how you use them within the classroom. I have stated in another article as well, I believe that teaching is an art with science to guide us through the best methods.