Learning Styles (1)

Decided to be a good student & take a closer look at learning styles, despite my scepticism based on previous encounters. The course material & set book list five major systems.

1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator [1957]

This uses a 126 item questionnaire to classify learners into 16 types, consisting of permutations of their choices within four pairs of dichotomous preferences. The pairs are:

EI - Extraverts/Intraverts
SN - Sensing/Intuitive
TF - Thinking/Feeling
JP - Judging/Perceptive

The first recommended website wasn't available.

The second provided most of the above information.

The third observed that there is "infinite variation, even among people of the same type" which casts something of a shadow over its usefulness (didn't we already know that human beings are infinitely variable?).
It quickly became impenetrable to the lay reader:
Phi coefficients, statistics for categorical data, corrected using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula, could be expected to underestimate reliabilities of type categories because the MBTI data are not true categories, but rather a result of scoring.Tetrachoric r correlations....
so I moved on.

2. Felder Silverman Learning Model [1991]

The first recommended website wasn't available. ("UniversalEducator.com is for Sale!")
The second recommended website hastily redirected me from www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSpage.html
to
http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/ILSpage.html
Restraining myself from speculating on what might have been happening in the locker rooms of North Carolina, I learned:
This uses a 44 item questionnaire to classify learners into 16 types, consisting of permutations of their choices within four pairs of dichotomous preferences. This time, the pairs are:

Active/Reflective
Sensing/Intuitive
Visual/Verbal
Sequential/Global

Definitely more economical than Myers-Briggs.
I tried this one out, here, & found it almost impossibly vague. For example:

When I am learning something new, it helps me to
(a) talk about it.
(b) think about it.

Where's the option for "both the above"? So I play "ip dip penny ship", pick one at random & irrevocably shift the balance of my learning style? Hmm. Telling me in the FAQs that "if you find that you have a hard time answering many questions that relate to a particular dimension, it just means that you are fairly well balanced on that dimension." doesn't really reassure me.

3. Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument
Recommended website not available. I'll come back to that one.
4. Kolb's Learning Style Inventory
Recommended website not available. I'll come back to that one.

5. Honey and Mumford's Classification
Recommended website is... Peter Honey's Online Shop.
Since I haven't "already registered as a pay-as-you-go user", my explorations are limited, but in between the exclamations NEW!! "Only £10" "market leader", it appears that:
This uses an 80 item questionnaire to classify learners into just 4 types:

Activist
Reflector
Theorist
Pragmatist

Although it is a relief to escape the dichotomous pairs, I can't help suspecting that £10 won't make my learning "easier, more effective and more enjoyable".

I'll be back....