The Learning Styles Myth
Are you a visual learner? Most people will answer that question without hesitating. Some of us need to see it, some need to hear it, some need to do it. It feels obviously true, and it's built into a lot of training programs.
The evidence says otherwise.
The best-known version is VARK, developed by Neil Fleming in New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Visual, Aural, Read/write and Kinaesthetic. But VARK is one of many. In 2004, a team led by Frank Coffield reviewed the field and counted 71 different learning-style models. Seventy-one different ways of sorting people, which should make anyone a little suspicious about how scientific any of them is.
The key claim is what researchers call "meshing": that you learn better when teaching matches your preferred style. Visual learners taught visually should beat visual learners taught by lecture, and the reverse for aural learners. That's testable. In 2008, a team led by Harold Pashler reviewed the research and found almost no studies designed well enough to test it, and the ones that were didn't support it. The headline: no adequate evidence that matching teaching to learning style improves learning.
Part of the problem is how styles get measured. Usually, you're asked what kind of learner you think you are. That measures a preference, not an ability. Preferences are real. You might enjoy diagrams more than lectures. But enjoying something isn't the same as learning more from it.
The other problem is that the subject usually decides the method. You learn the shape of countries from a map, whatever your style. You learn to dance by dancing. You learn a pronunciation by hearing it. The best way to teach depends far more on what's being taught than on who's learning.
The myth survives anyway. In surveys in the UK and the Netherlands, more than 90 per cent of teachers agreed that people learn better in their preferred style. It's easy to see why. It sounds respectful, it's simple to explain, and there are plenty of consultants happy to sell you a questionnaire.
There's a business lesson here beyond the classroom. Plausible language travels faster than evidence. "Learning style" sounds like a measurement, so people treat it like one. The same thing happens with personality types, generational labels and most of the frameworks on a training budget. A confident name makes a guess sound like science.
So vary how you teach, by all means. Use pictures, words and practice, because most subjects benefit from all three. Just don't build a program around labelling people. The research is clear: you're not a visual learner. You're a learner, and so is everyone else.
