Dual-Coding is better since the more ways you learn the information it is easier to retain the information. Kuepper-Tezel mentioned in the article that the more ways or times we can combine learning styles the richer the learning ends up being for the students. In the same article there is talk about concrete versus abstract styles of learners. Concrete learners need more concrete entities, things with distinct existence, as well as concrete examples. Abstract learners need abstract ideas, representations, and rules. Kuepper-Tezel's thoughts on the concrete versus abstract styles is , "However, a much better way to look at individual differences is to take their prior knowledge and expertise into consideration. Doing so, makes clear that novices often use concrete steps and examples because they simply don't know yet to extract abstract rules or understand more abstract information." It is vital to know or some idea of what the learner's prior knowledge and expertise before teaching. There also tends to be a categorization of impulsive learners and reflective learners. Impulsive learners tend to work faster but frequently are incorrect or inaccurate. Reflective learners usually take their time with their work and make far less mistakes. Kuepper-Tezel states that the dichotomy is flawed since there are other combinations of speed of doing a task and the accuracy of that same task. Overall in Kuepper-Tezel article "Learning Styles: A Misguided Attempt to Highlight Individual Differences in Learners" say that individuals cannot be put into certain categories of learning due to everyone being different and that every type of learner categorizations are to simplified.
In the article "Is Research-Based Instruction A Reality In Education? The Example Of Learning Styles And Dual Coding" by Joshua A. Cuevas said that pre-service teachers are still being taught that they should be teaching to the preference style of learning for the student(s). Cuevas brought up Fleming's VAK or VARK model that plenty of pre-service teachers learn and some teachers do use during their day in the classroom. Fleming's VAK is V is the representing the visual preference, A is for the auditory preference of learning, K is for the kinesthetic or the movement learners. VAK within VARK means the same thing as just mentioned and the R in VARK was later added to VAK to mean that there are learners who learn from reading and writing. Later down the road the educational psychology field started to point out that there was almost no evidence to support using learning styles while teaching helps enhance the students learning. The overall "research" supporting style-based instruction is opinion-based and lacked the evidence of seeing if it improved the students' learning. The theory of Dual Coding on the other hand disregards in some ways the student's preferred method of learning. Instead is the theory of combining auditory and visual learning. Dual Coding states that there can be better improvement within the students learning when mixing them.
Cuevas and Kuepper-Tezel talk about in their articles that Dual Coding is better due to it combining multiple learning styles into one. Mostly is talked about within using visual learning style and auditory learning together within instruction. Both articles said in some way or another state that it is easier to retain information when it is taught in more than one learning style. Kuepper-Tezel stated that saying that the student is a certain type of learner hinders the way they learn because then they only learn or try to learn that specific style of learning. Cuevas discussed how there was not the proper evidence to support single style of learning. Cuevas had made it known that people learn better when there are multiple styles on how the lesson is being taught.
Willingham brings up the fact that incorporating modalities does not have as big of an effect as we thought at one point in time. Instead says that there is an increase in remembering and learning when there is meaning behind the learning. At the end of page 4 of Willingham's article, "Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?" states that teachers should focus on how the content should be presented rather than the students preferred method. If the content shows how something looks or progression images it should be presented more visually, while if the content needs to be more descriptive than more auditorily. A lot of content can be taught using visual and auditory but not at the same time. On page 4 and 5 Willingham says, "Many topics may call for information in more than one modality. In a unit on the Civil War, in addition to lectures and reading, it might be appropriate to include recordings of martial music used to inspire the troops, it might be appropriate to include recordings of martial music used to inspire the troops, visual representations (maps) of battlefields. . ." The reason why educators use multiple modalities is because it is consistent with their own experiences. Most teachers believe that if a student figures out the concept of the lesson visually than the student must be a visual or auditory learner when in actuality that one idea was just easier to learn it in that specific way. Everyone learns with multiple styles. Some things tend to click with people with certain topics depending on the learning style.
I think learning styles can be misguided in the fact that there is not enough research to prove that teaching in one style of learning can improve the students actual learning. I do like how they all talk about incorporating multiple styles in a lesson can be better for the students learning depending on the lesson. Math might be easier to talk through while visually representing. Things like history or social studies are better mixing auditory and visual together. Like having a map of battlefield then having music that would have been used during a battle could improve how students improve that battle. I think using multiple modalities varies on the lesson or subject because each lesson or subject is different on how much easier it is to use a certain modalities while other modalities can be harder to use in the lesson. Using Dual Coding or using a modality directed to certain students can be harder to make sure the lesson is taught properly because it makes it so we have to focus more on incorporating all students learning needs or adding more things to the lesson.
