🔴 LEARNING STYLES🔴

I should acknowledge I used them. I was believer! This was the mid-90s. But, as I learned more about science, I changed my ways.

The first problem with learning styles is which model we should attack first! Learning styles reference the different ways or the different preferences (depending on which model) a person has to learn something. One literature review identified more than seventy different models (Coffield et al., 2004)—all with similar claims and issues!

The idea is that we should adapt and design learning experiences that center on the identified and professed styles of our learners. The biggest problem with learning styles is that there is literally no convincing data that says when we do align to style, we get any improved results (Kirschner, 2017; Pashler, 2008). In fact, some studies indicate we may get an inverse outcome, meaning we get worse results when we do (APA, 2019).

The biggest problem, apart from the fact that there’s no empirical evidence to support their existence, is it conflates a learner’s preference with the modality needed to actually learn.

The great psychologist, Paul Kirschner, often uses the following example in his keynotes and podcast interviews. If you ask a room full of people what their food preferences are, chances are that those rising to the top are sweet and/or salty and/or fatty with salted caramel ice cream near the top. Do you think that a doctor or a dietician would prescribe this sweet, salty, fatty diet?

When you need to memorize something, there are only so many ways you can do so. When you need to practice something, there are only so many ways to do it. One does not learn to play the piano without learning music theory, hand positions, notation, scales, etc. One does not practice playing without actually practicing. We can devise all sorts of creative methods to reach these different objectives, but the key is the objective sets the pedagogical mode. Not a preference!

Sure, we all have preferences in how we engage in learning activities. But are these preferences formal styles? Since most learning style assessments are self-scoring, the notion that you can accurately indicate your preference is unreliable. The difficulty of the lesson, the motivation to engage, and the teacher all affect a learner’s willingness to engage. Those contextual factors all impact how a person completes the assessment. Even those observational assessments where a trained psychometrician is conducting the test are problematic since learning something is affected by so many other factors.

Learning styles are, like many learning myths, attractive. It enables learners, parents, and teachers to use style as an excuse for failure. "Of course I didn’t learn well; I’m a visual learner, and you presented the new information auditorily." A nice, comforting idea. But not relevant when learning how to run the procedure for a nuclear power plant shutdown in an emergency!

References

American Psychological Association. (2019, May 29). Belief in learning styles myth may be detrimental [Press release]. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-styles-myth

Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., & Ecclestone, K. (2004). Should we be using learning styles? What research has to say to practice. Learning and Skills Research Centre.

De Bruyckere, P., Kirschner, P.A., & Hulshof, C.D. (2015). Urban myths about learning and education. Academic Press.

De Bruyckere, P., Kirschner, P.A., & Hulshof, C.D. (2020). More urban myths about learning and education: Challenging eduquacks, extraordinary claims, and alternative facts. Routledge.

Kirschner, P.A. (2017). Stop propagating the learning styles myth. Computers & Education, 106, 166–171.

Kirschner, P.A., & Hendrick, C. (2020). How learning happens. Routledge.

LDA Podcast. (2024, January 25). The “What the Skills” Episode. Interview with Paul Kirschner by Matthew Richter. https://ldaccelerator.com/podcast.

Pashler, H., Mcdaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3) 105–119. 10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x.