Are learning styles legit?
Ruth Harrowfield – BA/BSc, MSc Hons, PGDip I/O Psych, PGDip Science (Cl. Psych)
I remember, back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, learning styles were all the rage. This thinking has since been debunked. Well, actually it was kinda debunked all along.
The idea was to figure out what kind of learner you are and do all your learning in that style. Remember VARK? What’s your sensory approach to learning – are you a visual, auditory, reading/writing or kinesthetic learner?
Numerous studies have investigated the validity of learning styles theories, but the results have been either contradictory or inconclusive. In a comprehensive review published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a group of prominent cognitive psychologists concluded that the idea of learning styles lacks a solid theoretical foundation and that there’s little evidence demonstrating its effectiveness.
To quote them: “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach… and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing.”
Besides the empirical evidence issues, there are other problems with learning styles:
✖ Oversimplification – Learning is a complex cognitive process involving multiple factors. Reducing learning to a single style fails to account for the dynamic/interactive nature of learning. And it’s not possible to learn complex information via one style only.
✖ Inflexibility – Learning styles are often presented as fixed, unchangeable traits, but research shows learners’ preferences can vary depending on the task, content and context.
✖ Reinforcing stereotypes: Learners can be pigeonholed and see their learning style as a natural limitation, and this can discourage them from trying different ways of learning and ultimately limit their development opportunities.
✖ Pseudoscientific assessments: Learning styles are often determined by self-report assessments, which lack scientific validity and reliability. People’s self-reported preferences are poorly correlated with their actual performance (e.g. a person might think they learn better, say, visually rather than verbally, but their performance says otherwise!)
People do have preferences for how they learn and process information, but this is not the same as having fixed learning styles. These preferences can reflect variations in the way that people learn, but they also reflect differences in other factors like work ethic or learned habits, and learning preferences vary depending on the situation.
The best training uses a variety of approaches that are rooted in scientific evidence and provides multiple opportunities for learners to engage with, process and absorb information.
I’ll share a few approaches in another post or two that are proven to help.
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I’m Ruth Harrowfield, and together with my partner Sam, we run Harrowfield People Development, a strategic learning agency. We draw on the disciplines of organisational and behavioural psychology to provide fit-for-purpose experiences that build capability and confidence. Talk to us today.
