I exercise quite a bit, and have struggled with my weight when I exercise. It's kind of a paradox: I could lose weight or exercise, but not both.
Recently I accepted a $500 challenge to get down to a certain weight by a certain date, so I started taking the calorie in- calorie out bit seriously. I won the challenge of losing 30+ pounds and in so doing became very suspicious of the low-carb mentality I had adopted 25 years ago or so when the problem really surfaced.
To get through cardio I need carbs, and suspect that I would increase my overall calorie intake to get them as I was keeping my carb percentage low. Stop the exercise and I could take the weight off.
So I'm definitely back to the opinion that calorie balance is the real key (short of some metabolic disease). I'm 61 years old.
This sounds like an interesting book. When I looked at the learning style research I found that most "debunking" reviews pointed to a couple of meta-studies by, for example, Pascher, that found no evidence of learning styles. As I looked deeper I saw that most studies were very limited, and mostly compared visual to verbal memory recall efficacy.
There were a few that tried reading comprehension, etc, but often at an age of student where memory is not that different from comprehension in testing for it.
The other thing that I found was that nobody was testing for learning styles. They determined "Learning Styles" by giving questionnaire about preferences. It seems to me you need to at least develop a possible test for learning styles before you see if there are differences in learning. I may prefer to look at pictures, but I may actually learn more from text.
But I do side with Bjork in that teachers focusing on learning styles at this point is a distraction from things we know that help education. I just think more research needs to be done before we dismiss it.
I don't believe the learning style antagonists would disagree with this. They argue that variations do exist, but they are due to prior knowledge background, talent and IQ (or g or whatever).
I certainly see some truth in their argument. If you and I were each to read a text of something that, say, you are familiar with and I am not, then you would probably score higher in the "verbal" learning category and I would have to draw pictures to understand the text. But a big part of the difference is that I would have to learn a lot more than you in order to parse the text- you have a better background. This is easily seen in reading research papers for example, with a novice vs an expert.
My argument is that we simply haven't studied it enough to know if there are fundamental differences in the way people learn.
There's also an idea that some people like to jump in and try things and others like to think about them first. The learning style antagonist camp would say (if I understand them correctly) that these differences are due to a difference in talent, experience with the subject, or IQ.
Here's a quick response as I have to get to a sailboat race.
* Most research is limited; most test memory of pictures vs words (pictures win for most). Most educators of higher levels believe that there is more to learning than memory, but this is largely not addressed by the researchers.
* Most "learning styles" are established via questionnaire, not actually testing how people learn best
* Even the "Learning Styles is BS" crowd is starting to weasel out of the implication of their conclusion that everybody learns the same. They are saying things like "talent" and "context" etc. give differences in how people learn, not learning styles. A distinction without a difference IMHO- with the possible exception that you could argue that you are, for example, verbal for math and visual for history or something (because of context or whatever).
* I don't have a dog in the fight. I only want what's best for students, which means to learn how they learn. If they are all the same, so be it (but I would be surprised).
* More of my thoughts here: https://studyswami.com/are-learning-styles-bs/ and my conceptual take on how we should measure learning styles if we really want to research them (don't take the actual results too seriously).
Even if it's a thing, the idea that a teacher should take on the role of psychologists and figure out a child's optimal learning style should be preposterous to anyone with common sense.
It might work in combination with a software suite, with e-readers getting cheaper and more capable, and easily lasting through a school day, it's an option.
Ah yes, we can sort kids into humanities and sciences, by age, by ability, into gymnasiums and normal schools, but sorting visual learners from other ones is too hard.
We can only seperate kids into groups when it serves adninistrative or industrial beenfits, when its for the benefit of the child, forget it.
I mean how can you expect a ridiculously expensive system where children spend the majority of their waking hours to actually ask a child if it suits them?
