Learning Styles Under Attack

By Geoff Rip

One of the key standpoints of the Designing for Learning program is that accommodating learning styles (which are fundamentally learning preferences) is always less important than choosing training methods that are appropriate for the material to be learned and have a high predictability of learning.

Do you know that there are more 100 different learning style models and instruments?

Research conducted by the Learning Skills Research Centre (UK) identified 71 different models, of which 13 were categorised as major models because of their popularity and influence. A detailed evaluation of these 13 models found, inter alia, that “Some of the best known and widely used instruments have such low reliability, poor validity and negligible impact on pedagogy that we recommend in our review that their use in research and in practice should be discontinued.” [p.4]

Click here to read the research summary (Feb 2004).

More research ...

Report: Should We Be Using Learning Styles? What Research Has to Say to Practice. [84 pages]

Fashion Victims: Could Tests to Diagnose 'Learning Styles' Do More Harm Than Good.

For an interesting article that summarises research relating to the concept of 'learning style' and its applications in TAFE, click here. 

Don Clark has this to say about learning styles/preferences: “the research tends to agree that it is … far more important to match the presentation with the nature of the subject, such as providing correct learning methods, strategies, and context; than matching individual preferences.”  Read more.

During August 2006, Will Thalheimer offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could demonstrate that utilising learning styles improved learning outcomes. So far no one has claimed the reward. This article gives a one year update on the challenge. 

More recently, Baroness Susan Greenfield, the director of the Royal Institute and a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, said that the method of classifying pupils on the basis of ‘learning styles’ is a waste of valuable time and resources, and that the practice is “nonsense” from a neuroscientific point of view. Read the July 2007 article.

According to Professor Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist, learning styles don’t exist.

Learning Styles Don't Exist (1).

Learning Styles Don't Exist (2).

Finally, if you feel like a laugh, then read the following:

Parents of Nasal Learners Demand Odor-Based Curriculum
(from The Onion).

Freud's seminal contributions to learning styles
(by Dr Kerry Hempenstall).