LearningRx Featured in Scientific American

Should teachers teach to individual learning styles?

Does research show that teaching to learning styles is effective?

Are learning styles determined by brain skills or preference?

An article inScientific American explores these and other questions that matter to educators and parentseverywhere.

The article begins with the story of Dr. Ken Gibson who, inspired by hisown reading challenges, founded LearningRx, a brain training company thatstrengthens cognitive skills weaknesses.

According to Dr. Gibson, cognitive weaknesses are often at the root ofpreferred learning styles. That's because students lean on their particularcognitive strengths as a way of compensating for one or more weaknesses."We have a natural tendency to use the skills that are strongest,"Gibson adds. "That becomes our learning style."

He does a great job of explaining why learning preferences develop. Theburning question, then, is this: When schools accommodate those preferencesby teaching to individual learning styles, does it help? Sophie Guteri,the article's author, examines several studies, quoting researcherswho say there's no real evidence that accommodating individual learningpreferences results in higher grades or better test performance.

In the article, Gibson doesn't chime in on whether or not accommodationswork. His point seems to be, instead, that they shouldn't be necessary.That is, in fact, the premise behind his company, LearningRx. At LearningRx,students are given a cognitive skills assessment to identify weaknessesin skills including memory, logic, visual processing and auditory processing.Based on the results of that assessment, LearningRx brain trainers customizetraining exercises to target and strengthen those weaknesses. As weaknessesare strengthened, students find themselves better equipped to processincoming information in a greater variety of formats.

In this fascinating article, Guteri does an excellent job exploring thecomplexities of the issue, while the studies cited create a compellingcase for interventions, such as brain training, that improve students'ability to learn regardless of how material in the classroom is presented.