Substance Over Style: Assessing the Efficacy of Modality Testing and Teaching
Title
Substance Over Style: Assessing the Efficacy of Modality Testing and Teaching
Author
Kavale, K.A., & Forness, S.R.
Source
Exceptional Children, 54(3), 228-39.
Year Published
1987
Background
The idea that students have learning style* preferences makes intuitive sense to many people. Modality teaching theory* suggests that everyone has a specific learning style (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic) and that people learn best when taught with educational programs tailored to meet a preferred modality. Modality teaching has maintained widespread popularity for decades despite numerous studies reporting its lack of effect. This meta-analysis looks at modality testing and related programs that teach to students’ preferred learning style in order to determine if these methods are as effective as they are appealing.
Research Questions
The modality model is widely used in general and special education. The research, however, is largely critical of modality assessment and training. This meta-analysis examines the efficacy of the modality model in the instruction of children with Learning Disabilities* (LD).
Findings
- Although teaching students according to their preferred learning style seems logical, there is little evidence that this teaching method improves educational outcomes for students with LD.
- Neither modality testing nor modality instruction was shown to improve educational outcomes in this meta-analysis.
Conclusion/Recommendations
Kavale and Forness found that matching children by modality preference or learning style had nearly no effect on achievement. They concluded, "Although the presumption of matching instruction strategies to individual modality preferences has great intuitive appeal, little empirical support for this proposition was found.… Neither modality testing nor modality teaching were shown to be effective" (p. 237).
One of the difficulties in trying to teach to a child’s preferred modality is that it assumes that the other two modalities are not as important, when, in fact, all modalities are used in the learning process. Integrating all three modalities (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) into a lesson communicates and reinforces the material in a variety of ways and may increase learning for all children, regardless of their modality preferences. Teaching only to a child’s preferred modality while excluding the others reduces the child’s opportunities to interact with, learn, and master the material. Kavale and Forness conclude that, despite the popularity in both general and special education of modality and learning style preference models, these methods do not increase student achievement.
To be clear, the results of this work do not suggest that educators should disregard or dismiss individual differences among their students. Indeed students may respond quite differently to different teaching methods and styles, just not in a way that is modality-based.