Learning Styles and
Introductory Economics: A
matter of translation
Mary R Hedges
University of Auckland, NZ
DEE, September 2007
Cambridge,UK
Introduction
• How did you feel when the language
changed?
• Did you recognise the new language or
were you totally lost?
• Did it make a difference to you whether it
was a language you recognised versus one
you did not recognise?
• Even once things came back to English,
did you immediately start to focus again?
Classroom?
• In introductory economics courses we
tend to give students information in
several ways:
– Words
– Graphs
– Algebra
– Experiments (MUCH less common)
• Presumption is that the methods provide
repetition to the students and therefore
reinforcing the ideas, but is this the case?
Learning Styles
• When we then embed learning style preferences,
and how these relate to the ways we tell
economic stories, we are increasing the issues for
students.
–
–
–
–
–
Traditional university students?
NESB students?
Marginal students?
Students studying across disciplines?
Students studying compulsory papers?
• What happens if we consider learning styles as
•
languages?
Let’s start by looking at theories of learning and
what learning styles are.
Theories of Learning
• Large and diverse range of theories of learning.
• Can be grouped into three groups
– Behaviourism
– Cognitive
– Interactionist
• While all make an important contribution this
paper will focus on the cognitive strand.
• One thread of this is that of learning style and
specifically preferred sensory modes.
What is a Learning Style?
• It is the way in which a student begins to
concentrate on, process and retain new and
difficult information.
• It affects how the student acts in a group,
learns, participates, relates to others, solves
problems, teaches and works.
• Problem is first year university teaching
styles, particularly large classes, tend to
focus on particular styles that may not
match the student’s styles, particularly those
of marginal students.
Theories of Learning
BEHAVIOURISM
THEORY
COGNITIVE
THEORY
INTERACTIONIST
THEORY
(environment)
(mental processes)
(mental processes and
environment)
Learning/Cognitive
Styles
Personality Types Social Interaction
(Myers-Briggs) (Grasha-Reichmann)
Brain Dominance
Inventory
Sensory Preferences
(VARK)
Environmental
effects and
Chronopsychology
Why do they matter?
• Students absorb and process information in
different ways.
–
–
–
–
Visual or auditory
Logical or intuitive
Competitive or collaborative
Work steadily or more erratic
• Teachers also use different styles
– Teacher centred vs student centred
– Theory vs application
– Auditory vs visual (kinesthetic??)
• Mismatches can then lead to
– Student failure , frustration, dislike & angst
– Teacher frustration, poor evaluations, dislike & angst.
Sensory Preferences
• Obviously these change as we age
– Babies gustatory and tactile
– By late teens tends to be related to more
developed senses of visual, auditory and
kinesthetic.
• Fleming & Mills (1992) have then split visual
into two:
– Visual information presented as text (Read/write)
– Visual information presented as pictures (Visual)
• This split is important for university study
and particularly large first year classes.
V . A. R . K
• Visual
– Prefers diagrams, pictures, graphs, arrows, shapes,
colours, word pictures and space.
• Aural
– Talk things through, discussion, stories, lectures,
sayings, speaker skills.
• Read/Write
– Lists, dictionaries, handouts, quotes, texts, take notes
• Kinesthetic
– Examples, trips, experiments, applications, trial and
error
Traditional Tertiary Study
• Tends to be heavily focussed on the aural and
•
•
read/write options only.
Reality is there are more and more students that
are relatively weak in these areas.
At school level this is often mitigated by:
–
–
–
–
small classes,
close contact and study with peers,
closer student/teacher relationships,
more interactive environment.
• At tertiary level there are seldom these
mitigating aspects available, particularly in first
year.
What about Maths??
• Two ways of thinking about maths and learning.
• These relate to the degree of maths inability or
•
fear.
Extreme aversion
– Sees maths as a different language entirely.
– Polish example from start?
• Limited ability/confidence
– Can do some aspects of maths. May fit one or other
learning preference.
– Similar to recognising language and at least knowing
where to start.
Maths and Vark
• Obviously there are different links to the
learning styles mentioned.
– Visual - may relate to graphs
– Read/Write - may relate to algebra
– Kinesthetic - problem solving ability
• The ability of a student to fit into these
however can depend on their degree of
aversion or preference toward maths.
• How does this fit with language
acquisition?
Language Acquisition
• Researchers have found a very consistent order
in the acquisition of language.
– “silent period," in which they speak very little if at all.
• May be a period of language shock, in which the learner
actively rejects the incomprehensible input of the new
language.
• "silent" learners may be engaging in private speech or selftalk when they are rehearsing important survival phrases and
lexical chunks.
– Period of formulaic speech.
• Uses a handful of routines to accomplish basic purposes.
– Experimental phase of acquisition.
• the semanitcs and grammar of the target language are
simplified and the learners begin to construct a true
interlanguage.
– Fluency
What about Fluency?
• Fluency actually encompasses a number of
related but separable skills:
– Reading: the ability to easily read and
understand texts written in the language;
– Writing: the ability to formulate written texts
in the language;
– Comprehension: the ability to follow and
understand speech in the language;
– Speaking: the ability to speak in the language
and be understood by its speakers.
• Look familiar?
Fitting It All Together - Case 1
• A student in my large first year class (600
•
•
students in my stream).
Made use of tutorials and office hours and
appeared to understand the material in
discussions.
First test result poor but a very clear pattern
visible.
– He avoided all questions that had graphs either as a
part of the question or required as a part of the
answer!!
• On discussion he identified that he had poor
spatial skills so had learnt to avoid them.
Solution 1
• Fortunately this student was multi-lingual
• Discussed how he learns new languages (spoke
•
•
•
•
5 & was actually a translator!!)
Then discussed the concept of the types of
economic expression being like languages.
Learn a new one - visual language usng basic
graph book (read/write that he liked).
Explicitly learn how to translate from the
languages (styles) he was comfortable with to
ones he wasn’t comforatble with and vice versa).
With practice fluency (and results) improved.
Case 2
• Another student could deliver back in the
language (style) the question was asked
in.
– Graph question with graph answer or
algebraic to algebraic solution etc
• Could not cope with a question asked in
one form and the answer required in a
different form
– Algebra to graph or graph to algebra
• Could translate between words and either
of the other two but not directly between
the two ‘second’ languages.
Solution 2
• Problem was that words were ‘first
language’ and the others were both
‘second’ languages.
• Havng identified that this was the issue
the student immediately found her own
solutions.
– Mainly using words as the intermediary
language even when the question did not
require it.
• Results in second test substantially better
– Along with enjoyment levels, confidence etc.
Back to our Student Groups
• Traditional university students?
– Tend to be stronger in read/write and aural
– Therefore what is often perceived as a maths problem
may be a visual problem or an algebra language
problem instead.
• NESB students?
– Often already translating from one language.
– Explains why they are often more comfortable in
‘universal’ languages like algebra and graphs.
– Then leaves them often having to translate their
‘universal’ language into their first language and then
into the words of current language.
• Marginal students?
– Often stronger in visual and kinesthetic learning
styles. University uses these methods much less
often.
– If a maths aversion is overlaid on this it may also
reduce their ability ot cope with graphs (see them as
maths rather than visual)
– Can help by encouraging them to think in graphs or
word pictures and then manually translating from that
into either algebra or words.
• Students studying across disciplines?
– Different disciplines will tend to use particular styles
more than others. If crossing disciplines that move
from visual to read/write or aural it will cause
problems.
• Students studying compulsory papers?
– Issue here is one of assuming it is the whole subject
that is the issue and don’t pause to see what they can
and can’t do.
Identification
• Identification of these issues only became
obvious to me when going through tests
with students helping then find what they
did wrong (not multichoice).
• Discussing their problem questions with
them
– How did they approach the question?
– What process did they go through in order to
answer the question?
– How did they ocnsider the problem?
– When did they decide to miss it out?
Solutions?
• Making VARK quesitonnaire website
available to students
– Enables them to identify their own
preferences and weaknesses
– Ideally I’d like to introduce this as a week 1
tutorial for all first years.
• Explicitly taking students through the
translation of a concept in class.
• Explaining how it does not matter which
way you remember it so long as you can
translate between the different methods.
Future Work
• Would like to develop a VARK type diagnostic
•
•
•
more specifically for economics students.
Plan to change teaching notes in order to utilise
language acquisition and translation processes.
Would like to develop support materials for
teachers and/or students that can provide them
with help in learning/ translating between the
economic languages.
Obviously has wider implications for the success
of marginal students but thought to start where
I am comfortable.
Questions?
Feedback?