Dyslexia and learning styles debate

Dyslexia is a common condition among creative practitioners. The following email discussion between tutors at Rose Bruford sums up a range of attitudes to learning: the different theatre disciplines each seeming to display a different approach to learning.

What seems to be emerging is the development of a more visual/kinaethetic approach to developing knowledge. To some extent there is some misunderstanding in the exchange: it is included to illustrate the diffficulty of ‘getting inside the head’ of someone with a different thought process.

The College guide to teaching dyslexic students is on another page.

From: Simon (Dyslexia advisor)
Sent: 23 October 2007 16:01
To: Staff
Subject: RE: LECTURE NOTES

Hi everyone,

Since I started this debate, I think I should offer comment on what has been said. I’ve copied (below) the replies we’ve had and will try to clarify my thoughts on each.

Before that, though, thanks to everyone for contributing. I’d like to say, too, that I know there’s lots of examples of good practise here, and that my awareness of what goes on comes about when students come to me asking for help with things that they can’t cope with. They don’t come when things are going well, of course - when they are on the end of more widely inclusive (some would say ‘better’) teaching. Perhaps I don’t need to make this point… but students don’t go to the trouble of coming to me - with all the hassle, organisation, time out of other activities and possible stigma it might entail, unless they have a real reason to.

Many of the students I deal with have profound difficulties in language processing and simply cannot take notes while listening to a lecture. There is little value for them in trying to do it. Often they either absorb nothing of the information presented because they are focussing on writing (very commonly notes that mean nothing to them when they read them); or they listen and don’t write but can’t recall the weight of information presented.

I strongly believe as well that dyslexics are the ‘canaries in the coalmine’ of education. Invariably, where the dyslexics are struggling, other students are learning less effectively that they might. Good teaching is good for everyone.

Perhaps it’s worth pointing out, too, that the students I deal with are the motivated ones. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t - they certainly wouldn’t be seeing me. I’ve been working with dyslexic students for nearly ten years and I think I’ve met, maybe, three who used their dyslexia as an excuse for not being successful - and they got no sympathy from me. The majority of dyslexics would cut off a limb rather than use their dyslexia as a reason for not succeeding. Many won’t seek help from me because they see that as tantamount to ‘copping out’.

SO…

What Nick said… Lighting Design; Production)

Simon’s points are well made. Two questions (for discussion):
1. How do we move forward on getting a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) available to all students, so that such resources (and many others) can be made available?
2. How can we adjust our deployment model to to better reflect the effort required to prepare materials? The present model (that assumes a constant amount of prep time for all kinds of contact time) reinforces the very practices that Simon points to – where is the incentive to prepare self-study materials which might then reduce the contact time required to deliver them (Simon’s golden 45 minute rule) if all that then happens is that the contact hours freed up get redeployed elsewhere? Staff are better off sticking with the present system which “uses up” the contractual contact hours with minimum preparation required.

……. what I think
These are aspects of college operations that I don’t understand well enough to comment on; except that what Nick seems to be saying is that some of the practises I am highlighting are embedded in college culture - if this is so, it probably needs to be addressed at senior management level. on the other hand, if an attitudinal change happened at grass roots level, might this not act as a ‘push’ to force changes higher up?

What Colin said… (Directing)

Emm…’All lectures’??? Isn’t that a bit categorical? I read a book – as I go along I write notes that clarify the structure and provide a mnemonic of the key points. This is an active process. I am not passively receiving or copying but actively sifting and wrestling with the material. It’s a way of engaging and processing. It helps with and deepens my learning. My notes are not a copy of the text slavishly reproduced. But why read the book at all? I can go into W.H Smiths and get a copy of Brodie’s Notes that remove the necessity of any real engagement, any wrestling with complexity and richness of experience .

No-one could approve of mindless copying , but perhaps the reduction of everything to pre-digested bullet points accessible without the need for human contact or individual, personal thought is also something it might be worth questioning? Why bother engaging with the students at all? It would certainly remove the pressure on space. Clearly where ‘lectures’ are simply dictation, handouts or notes are as good. But are there any such here? In doing what Simon suggests (and I agree) is good practice in lectures – enthusing students etc etc, they will take notes. Shall we ban this? Offering them instead the lecture and its digested outcomes too? Perhaps we’d be better spending our time encouraging students to think for themselves, not providing them with ways of avoiding doing so. Notes/handouts are appropriate in some situations and not in others. Lets continue to employ a range of pedagogical strategies, in case the students leave here, enter the real world and expect it too to come with ‘notes on the intranet’.

As to Simon’s point about length of ‘lectures’, it seems to belong to a different argument about a different subject.

……. what I think
One observation here is on the use of the first person in the description of how Colin works. Simply put, not everyone works the same way - everyone’s optimal learning process is unique to them. What works well for Colin would not work well for me - and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to start learning a subject by taking an overview - Brodie’s Notes might actually be the best place to start for some people, promoting rather than preventing ‘real engagement’ for those who engage better with detail when they have a context which orientates them. I imagine that many tutors begin their sessions by giving students an overview of the content. That helps those whose learning works best when moving from overview to detail rather than the other way around - which is better (or do-able) for others. Those who operate in an intuitive learning kind of way rather than the more traditional analytical way will tend towards this approach as a preference.

Colin uses phrases such as ‘passively receiving’, ’slavishly reproduced’, ‘predigested’, ‘without the need for … individual, personal thought’ and suggests that my idea would remove the need for students to think for themselves. All I can do is refer back to what I’ve written above. Some people work differently from others and to teach on the basis that ‘what works for me will work for everyone and is, therefore necessarily the best and only way to teach and every other way is somehow inferior’ is a narrow, and simply wrong, way of thinking. And I never suggested banning anything. Those for whom note-taking in lectures works best will continue to do it because it is best for them and students naturally gravitate towards that which works for them because they know it does. I’m not suggesting that we narrow the range of ways students can learn, but broaden it.

As for students entering the ‘real world’ - well, that’s the point, really. I agree that education is not the real world. It’s highly artificial, bound by rules and practises that often get in the way of what it’s supposed to be achieving. In the ‘real world’ (and I speak as someone with sixteen years in sales and sales management - a pretty ‘real’ environment) people are much more interested in results than methods. In that ‘real world’ people are much more empowered to negotiate their ways of functioning because, in the main, in that ‘real world’, people are much more interested in what people achieve, not how they go about achieving it. And because they are, they’re more often open to suggestion about alternative ways of doing things. what anyone who looks will find is that industry, in the main, is very aware of the principles I’m talking about. I was a sales trainer and trainer of managers in financial services before I came into education and dyslexia. I was trained in learning styles there - and was required to demonstrate a knowledge of variations in how people learn in the training courses I designed - or I would be failed in my assessments.

As for ‘enter the real world and expect it to come with notes on the internet’ - how could it be a bad thing to make more information available to more people more easily? If there are those who would abuse such a provision, surely we shouldn’t allow their existence to constrain the provision we offer to those wouldn’t?

And no, my point about length of lectures is part of the same debate. Because, even though we know that two or three hour lectures are poor ways of imparting information, we still do them and what I’m lobbying for is improving the way we teach. Requiring (as opposed to allowing) note taking where notes could be provided is not an effective way of teaching - neither are long lectures. When the two are done together, they are doubly ineffective.

What John said… (Theatre Studies)

Simon, Colin,
I enjoyed reading both your emails. Colin, I think it’s very positive that you have responded to Simon’s email and begun to open up debate about how best to serve students.

Simon, as you said in your staff induction talk, a good place to start is from the assumption that everyone is different; everyone learns differently and requires different support. It would seem to follow that we should be providing a range of learning experiences (which I think is what you are advocating Colin) and encouraging diverse modes of engagement. I believe (rightly or wrongly) that the most important work is done between tutor and student, and between students as members of a group. Any notes a student takes, or a tutor provides should support, record, inform, expand, underpin etc those things which occur when we come together to do things, discuss ideas and exchange opinions.

As for the suggestion of putting lecture notes online, I think I would return to the assumption that we should be providing a range of experiences and thus would say this was all to the good provided it didn’t inhibit other ways of engagement. Simon, I of course defer to your authority in the matter of dyslexia but I think we also need to acknowledge that when our students leave Rose Bruford the work situations they find themselves in will not necessarily provide them with this kind of support. I don’t have the solution, but extending something that you wrote in your email, wouldn’t something like an ‘annotated bibliography’ of lectures serve students better? Rather than delivering key points and facts these could signpost the sources (which of course would include more than books) which could introduce and cross-fertilise key ideas/figures/events etc. The ‘annotation’ could provide some stimuli for interrogating those sources, and suggest ways of thinking through what they propose. That way students would be guided, advised and supported but also encouraged to take active control of their own learning and develop their own knowledge gathering and knowledge processing abilities?

Perhaps this initiative could be integrally linked to study sessions to ensure that it was actively used; say for example if annotated bibliographies appear online in advance of study sessions in the knowledge that students are required to use these to source some information to bring and share in classes. I would hope that a service such as this would invigorate the interaction between tutor and students as well as between individual students thereby enhancing the class-room experience (which is ultimately the unique mode of collective engagement that defines institutional education, and sets the experience of it apart from other forms of learning).

These are just my first ideas to add to the debate Simon and Colin have been promoting, I would be most interested to hear anyone’s thoughts.

……. what I think

I agree with John completely about providing a range of of ways of experiencing learning - that’s what my suggestion is aimed at. And it wouldn’t inhibit any other ways of working.

As for work situations - education is rarely preparation for those anyway… little of what ‘my’ students have problems with in education continues to be a problem for them in the workplace because, as I said, they are much more easily able to negotiate their way around those issues - if they encounter them at all.

The notes I am talking about, though, are the ‘key points and facts’ that John refers to. This is what ‘overview to detail’ learners need to provide them with the framework they can then build on.

What Peter said… (Acting)

I really do agree with Colin. Also, I’m having difficulty understanding the concept of something being “tiring” as a bad thing for a student. Though I understand these concerns, I don’t feel this idea could apply to me. My classes, and also the classes of many of my colleagues, are nothing like lectures in the traditional sense. Students are learning through practical exploration and hopefully discovering their own answers. They should absolutely find a way to document and process the information themselves and not have it handed to them. Because the nature of this work is creative, each of my classes are loosely structured, so that the work can develop organically according to what is happening in the room and how students respond to the ideas. Also, as we grow and develop our ideas as teachers we try different things, we keep moving rather than allowing our practice to fossilise.

Notes on the intranet would not be a “one off”, they would have to be redone each year…and this idea frankly makes me feel tired (if ‘tiredness’ is a concern). After graduation, work out there in the real world is ‘tiring’ and hard and I believe each student will be better served being helped with strategies of how to manage their own learning, rather than lecturers managing their learning for them. This has been my understanding of how a degree should differ from secondary school education.
For some lecturers, a system like this may not mean much extra work and may make perfect sense. For me it would not. So my concern would be that something like this would be introduced as a mandatory requirement.

If any lecture is particularly full of information which needs to be copied or noted, could it not be filmed or recorded and a DVD or CD made available in the library? I have no faith that students would actually read notes on the intranet, they barely read emails and leave handouts scattered on the floor as they leave a room.

……. what I think
Tired students don’t learn as well as untired students. It’s that simple. Those who find writing and listening simultaneously difficult (meaning anyone who is predominantly right-brained including, of course, dyslexics) finds lectures particularly tiring. being tired makes the writing and listening even harder. Usually anxiety magnifies the problems. knowing that it’s important to ‘capture’ the information in the lecture and having had a lifetime’s experience of being unable to do so means that many dyslexics go to lectures already affected by a background anxiety that is affecting their ability to process the information before they arrive - often they are unaware of this since it’s a deeply embedded part of their learning experience.

Those lectures that are ‘not like traditional lectures’ are probably not those that I am concerned with. ‘Learning through practical exploration’ is almost certainly an inclusive way of working and will work for a wider range of students than those trad lectures. But ‘not have it handed to them’? surely the object is to make learning happen - you seem to be suggesting that the student should have to work hard in order to be worthy of being taught. If there was an easier way for someone to learn, why choose a harder one? Does this make the knowing somehow more valuable? I don’t see how.

And, Peter, you can’t have it both ways, either tiredness is an issue and we should take account of it when it affects students’ learning - and teachers’ teaching, or it should be ignored in both cases. Which side of that fence are you on? In any case (and I really can’t know this one way or the other myself), wouldn’t it be the case that the essence of a course - and therefore the notes - is the same from year to year?

I don’t think i’m asking for teachers to manage their students’ learning - i’m asking for them to deliver learning in ways that accommodates all of their learners. and that is definitely the responsibility of the teachers.

The dvd or cd idea might be useful. It’s normal for dyslexic students to be provided with recording devices to record lectures (because the authorities understand the difficulties that they have in absorbing information in lectures) so the principle is established.

But, Peter, you have another inconsistency… you can’t really object both to the idea that info should be ‘handed to them’ and also complain that, after you’ve put in the effort, that you ‘have no faith that students would actually read notes on the intranet’. Which are you bothered about? I can assure you that the students who come to ask me for advice about how to cope with the situation we’re discussing would jump at the chance.

What Ros said… (Disability advisor)

Good plan, good practice.

……. what I think
Gosh! Well… I agree.

What Julian said… (Stage management; Outreach)

From experience of dealing with dyslexics over the years, I’m aware that one-size-fits-all doesn’t work, as colleagues have commented. The specific issue is the extent to which they are able to process information being presented. Dyslexic students are able to contribute to discussion (usually very well) but have trouble note taking at the same time as participating, whether talking, listening or observing. To ask them to do so is pointless, because they will expend their effort on the coding of what is being written, rather than ‘getting’ what is being said. Lecture notes in this situation are therefore an aide-memoire rather than a transcript – the bullet point approach. Working in a visual register myself I’ve got into the habit of lecture planning through PowerPoint, which gives me something to print out for them.

They usually develop their own coping strategies: dyslexic DSM’s for example will memorise the script, without anyone realising. During the tec rehearsal they often present as being very slow because of the effort of coping with multiple information streams. This is frustrating to directors in particular. However, come to the dress rehearsal and they usually fly, because the show gets committed to deep memory quite fast, and they have as a result a better grasp of the big picture.

From a few unscientific straw polls, it would appear that many of our students will not be working within a verbal/procedural learning style – for many of them that is the reason for coming here! The majority are likely to be visual/spatial or kinaesthetic learners. From a multiple intelligences standpoint (http://www.theatreinmotion.com/resources.htm ) there are a wide variety of different skill being deployed. I think collectively we need to have the courage to move away from the mode of the classical lecture as a way of imparting knowledge, unless it can be demonstrated to be the only, as well as the most effective, way of transmitting information to the student.

My contribution to the debate!

……. what I think

I think Julian has expressed some of my points better than I did.

From the Library:
The LRC has all of its information sheets on the student intranet pages under the LRC documents option. It’s not perfect and if I had the chance(the time and the technical knowledge) I’d like to develop it an awful lot more but it’s a start.

I’ve also just run an information skills session for a group of 3rd year students. I’m not a trained teacher but from my own experience I know that people learn differently and I try to remember that when I work with students and my own staff. As well as giving the 3rd years copies of the PowerPoint slides I was going to be using at the start of the event, they had two information sheets that they could read after the lesson and after the event I emailed the presentation to all of them so they could access the web links easily and save them to their favourites. It takes a little more time but they and I seem to have benefited from it - in short I think the information was transferred more successfully than if I had sat there wittering on with them with their heads down all furiously scribbling notes rather than looking and listening.

I think a VLE or the chance to make more use of the College’s website would be beneficial to all students and staff. It is not only lecture notes/handouts that could be made available online but the more general items or frequently asked questions – how do I get a new ID card, who’s who and what are their contact details or even streaming the video that the tutor has said everyone should watch.

Kate