It's time to tackle the myths in education

Tom Bennett in The Telegraph

Are you a visual learner or a kinaesthetic learner? Perhaps you are an auditory learner? Maybe you learn best when implementing a combination of these 'learning styles'.

Over the past 40 years, the 'learning style' theory has garnered support from professionals across the education community and has become a much-used teaching tool across the UK.

But does the longevity of 'learning styles' and its persistent presence in the classroom actually mean it has any educational value at all? The simple answer is, no one can be sure; because no one has categorically proved the theory one way or the other.

Tom Bennett, teacher, author and Director of researchED, says there are many such theories that fill classrooms across Britain that have little grounding in scientific research. According to Bennett, it's time teachers learnt to raise a "sceptical eyebrow".

“We have had all kinds of rubbish thrown at us over the last 10 to 20 years,” he says. “We’ve been told that kids only learn properly in groups. We’ve had people claiming that children learn using brain gym, people saying that kids only learn if you appeal to their learning style. There’s not a scrap of research that substantiates this, and, unfortunately, it is indicative of the really, really dysfunctional state of social science research that exists today.” 

One of the main problems in resolving this issue is the fact that educational theory, unlike the actual sciences, is very difficult to test. How do you find out if the assertion that ‘children learn best in groups’ is actually correct? How do you test the effectiveness of 'homework', when homework can consist of anything from essays to artwork?

A new fund, launched last year by the Wellcome Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), is seeking to answer some of these questions. Six university-led projects have been funded to research how neuroscience can help pupils learn more effectively in the classroom.

While Bennett welcomes the work of the EEF, he says teachers need to be weary of who is leading research projects.

“You hear people say that children must have iPads in order to be 21st century learners, but when you look at the research that tries to substantiate this claim, it’s normally written by iPad manufacturers and technology zealots, and that’s fine, but don’t pretend it’s research," he says. "Children don’t have the time to waste on that rubbish, especially poor children.”

Bennett isn’t the only one to voice these concerns. According to new research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), trillions of dollars are spent on education policies around the world, but just one in 10 are actually evaluated.

Commenting on the research, Andreas Schleicher, OECD director of education and skills, said: "If we want to improve educational outcomes we need to have a much more systematic and evidence-based approach.”

Speaking at the Education World Forum in London, Schleicher added: "We need to make education a lot more of a science."

It seems an obvious statement, but, clearly, not one that has been put into practice over the years. With many initiatives left unsubstantiated.

Bennett has been a vocal critic of such educational practices and founded researchED as a way to counter the myths in education and improve research literacy within the education community.

“There are two main things I am calling for here,” he says. “One is that I want to highlight to teachers the rubbish that is out there, so that when someone comes along and says, ‘you should do this to help children learn’ teachers can raise a sceptical eyebrow and say ‘what’s the evidence behind that?’, ‘why should I spend six extra hours a week doing this?’, ‘why should my school spend half a million pounds doing it?’

“These are really important questions; both for ministers looking at education policy, and for team leaders within a school environment.

“The second thing is I would like teachers to engage more with driving good research. At the moment, a lot of research is very distant from the classroom, it’s done by people who don’t understand children, it’s done by people who have never taught. I want teachers to engage more with good research and drive future research.”

One of Bennett’s goals with researchED is to give teachers the opportunity and courage to question research, to be sceptical about practices and to look at the provenance of research before wholly accepting assertions as fact.

The organisation has proved hugely successful since its launch in 2013, growing from an initial conference in Dulwich College, to launches in New York and Sydney this year.

It has also led to Bennett being nominated for the inaugural $1 million Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize, the largest prize of its kind given to one exceptional teacher in recognition of their contribution to education.

Along with Richard Spencer, a teacher at Middlesbrough College in Billingham, County Durham, Bennett is the only nomination from the UK.

“It’s very strange,” he says. “I certainly don’t feel like one of the top two teachers in the country. There are probably better teachers in my school.

“I like this award, not only because I’ve been nominated, but because it’s a celebration of teachers and raises their status nationally and internationally. All the people on the list – and I’m very honoured to be on the shortlist – have done lots of things outside of the classroom to try and make things better for teaching in general.”

“From my point of view, and to return to my main argument, I want teachers to be a lot more sceptical of what they read, because often the evidence is far less conclusive than people would like to have you believe.

“Really good science tells you when you’re wrong. I’m not saying that people don’t have learning styles, because there is no evidence that we don’t. But as Richard Dawkins highlighted, ‘you can’t prove a negative’”