The Learning Styles Myth
Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #128
It’s something I raise every year with new students: the notion that some people are visual learners, some auditory learners, some kinaesthetic, and so forth. And how this is something they should stop believing!
The connected implication, of course, is that people learn best when they receive information through this preferred modality. “I’m a visual learner,” many students say, “and so I learn better through diagrams than from reading a text.”
The Problem
There are several problems with the concept of learning styles. To some up some of the key ones:
It’s very easy to overestimate the role of individual differences in how we learn. Does everyone really learn so differently? We may have different preferences, but that doesn’t mean that systems like attention, working memory and long-term memory are fundamentally different from one person to another.
How we learn material best is really a function of the material itself, rather than of the learner. We learn maps visually; we learn Jane Austen’s novels through the written word; we learn to throw a basketball kinaesthetically.
The theory as a whole is unfalsifiable and unscientific (this is my response to anyone who says, “We just haven’t found enough evidence yet”). The VAK theory of learning styles and related theories have been given a more than fair chance to prove their utility and have failed to do so. It’s not a good idea at this point to insist that it must be true and keep trying to find supporting evidence. That is not how science works.
Flawed metacognition, for example in learners incorrectly believing that they learn only through visual information, is going to influence study strategies, making the belief in learning styles a distraction/waste of time at best, and at worst biasing students towards less effective ways to study.
I touch on most of these issues in the blog post below, which may be a suitable one to share with students:
Blog: Learning Styles Reconsidered
Does it actually matter?
Some researchers (e.g. Newton & Salvi, 2020) have suggested that it’s unclear what difference a belief in learning styles actually makes to students or educators. Could it be the case that, for all its flaws, the concept doesn’t make all that much difference to learning or teaching?
After all, it’s often the case that a person’s beliefs don’t dictate their behaviour in practice (just ask any social psychologist). People with beliefs about tolerance and kindness don’t always enact these 100% of the time. So it’s possible that teachers who agree with learning styles in principle – or, indeed, other wacky things about learning – might not be teaching in a way that reflects this.
All the same … I am of the view that it is rather unprofessional for teachers to espouse incorrect views of teaching and learning. It’s a bad look, and it would certainly make me cringe if my colleagues were telling students to find their learning style!
As I’ve mentioned before, I also think it’s a good idea for students to develop accurate metacognition – to learn how learning works.
It’s a relief if this myth doesn’t make a huge difference to attainment overall. All the same, it’s still preferable to stamp it out if we can. There remains the possibility that some students will be led astray by this idea.
Perhaps a reason this doesn’t happen more is that the idea is sufficiently vague that few make a serious attempt to put it into practice.
Below is a paper that played a major role in debunking the learning styles myth, and which features some really eye-opening stats about what a lucrative industry this has been for some companies and consultants:
Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119.
All the best for the coming week,
Jonathan
Last time: What Makes a Difficulty Desirable? Philosophical Reflections on a Key Concept
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