The Learning Style Myth

        I remember learning about learning styles in middle school when my mom taught me about them. We determined that I was an “auditory learner” and that I learned best through hearing things. My mom claimed to be a “visual learner” and said that she has to see things in order to understand them. Learning styles are something that is taught in many teacher education programs and many teachers are encouraged to teach utilizing their student's specific learning styles in order to help their students more effectively. I always understood that if I taught my students using strategies that focused on their set learning styles they would be able to learn faster and better. The research on this topic says otherwise.

What are learning styles?

        Learning styles refer to the way that a student is learning material. There are many different learning styles, but the most common ones are known as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Reading/writing can often be included and all together they are known as VARK. In 1897, Niel Fleming developed the VARK learning styles model which seems to be the most commonly used model of learning styles (Main, 2022). The idea is that if you teach utilizing a student's preferred learning style, they will learn more effectively and possibly retain more information.

        David Kolb devised another learning style theory in 1984 which is often called the experiential learning cycle (Main, 2022). Kolb’s theory is based on two preferences: concrete/abstract and active/reflective; then there are four different types of learners: accommodator, diverger, converger, and assimilation. There are many learning styles beyond Fleming and Kolb's theories, but these are two common models seen when discussing learning styles.

 

What does research say?

        These learning styles sound like a great way to teach, but the research reveals that there is actually no benefit to teaching using specific learning styles (Furey, 2023). Students likely have a learning style preference that they enjoy learning with but using a student's preferred learning style does not have any significant impact on their ability to learn. In an Education Next article, William Furey (2023) explains how 29 states include learning styles on their teacher licensure exams and 67% of teacher preparation programs require students to incorporate learning styles into developing lesson plans. Despite the fact that “there is no evidence that designing lessons that appeal to different learning styles accelerates student learning,” teachers are still expected to know and utilize learning styles (Furey, 2023). The more exposure to content a student has, the faster they will learn that content. Different learning styles are also better used in different settings. Science is a great place to utilize kinesthetic learning, while a kinesthetic activity will be harder to put into a reading lesson.

        There is a benefit to adjusting teaching in order to meet students' needs, but it does not seem as though adjusting teaching to fit learning styles is a good use of time in order to do this. A teacher's time would be better spent implementing accommodations for students who need them or differentiating instruction to meet different instructional levels seen in a classroom. Although students likely have a preference for how they want to learn, teaching specifically to that learning style will not help improve their learning ability. Utilizing different learning styles when teaching will likely benefit all students because they will be receiving material in different ways which in turn will help their brain to begin to remember the content better.

References

Furey, W. (2023, April 19). The stubborn myth of “Learning styles.” Education Next. https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-state-teacher-license-prep-materials-debunked-theory/

Main, P. (2022, November 15). Learning styles. RSS. https://www.structural-learning.com/post/learning-styles