Here’s a question: Does teaching to a student’s learning style enhance learning?
If you think it does, keep reading. If you don’t think it does, move on to the next article – I won’t waste your time.
OK, so firstly, there’s no need to worry: you’re not alone. Dekker et al. (2012) reported that 94% of teachers surveyed believed in the meshing hypothesis, i.e., that students perform better when presented with information in their preferred learning style.
It’s easy to understand the appeal. It seems intuitive that a student who likes to see new language, for example, would learn more effectively when they see new language, as opposed to when they hear new language. In addition, the concept fits very nicely with the belief that every student is unique, and should be treated as such.
Here’s the catch, though: learning styles are nonsense.
I will elaborate, but let’s start at the start. Our desire to categorise people into different types can be traced back to Carl Jung and the psychological tests that emerged from his work in the personality field during the middle of the previous century. It didn’t take long for education to join in, with Dunn and Dunn’s 1972 Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic (VAK) model emerging as the best known. The process is simple: students complete a questionnaire designed to reveal their learning style, which teachers then use to guide individual instruction. Today, as revealed by the above statistic, the meshing hypothesis is taken as fact by the vast majority of teachers – and, much more worryingly, by many teacher trainers.
However, facts require evidence – and evidence we don’t have.
Pashler et al. (2008), in a literature review of learning styles, failed to discover any empirical support for matching learning style to instruction. No one, in other words, had ever successfully proven that teaching to a student’s learning style improved learning any more than teaching to their non-preferred learning style. ‘The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,’ Pashler at al. (2008) wrote. ‘If classification of students’ learning styles has practical utility, it remains to be demonstrated.’ As I type this in late 2024, with many more scholars having taken on the challenge in the intervening years, it still remains to be demonstrated.
Incredibly, according to Briggs and Mayne (2018), there had been no major peer-reviewed ELT-specific study that sought to question the meshing hypothesis until Lethaby and Harries did so in a 2016 paper on neuromyths. Once again, they reported that the vast majority of teachers surveyed had faith in learning styles (88%), and what’s more, most teachers stated that they had received training that promoted their use and that this influenced their classroom practices. Lethaby and Harries argued that learning styles should be removed from training courses; and indeed, the following year Cambridge English did exactly that.
If you’re not already convinced, there’s more. Kratzig and Arbuthnott (2006), as well as not finding evidence for the application of learning styles, also reported a lack of consistency (less than 50%) between what students self-reported their learning style to be and what a questionnaire revealed it to be. Thus, not only is the meshing hypothesis dubitable, so too may be the methods by which learning styles are diagnosed in the first place.
Even the position that ‘learning styles may not work, but they are not detrimental per se’ has had hot water poured on it recently. Sun et al. (2023) showed that learning style descriptions can impact thinking about students’ intellectual aptitudes. Across two experiments, teachers, parents and children were asked to judge the intelligence of two fictional students, one introduced as a visual learner and the other as a hands-on learner. In both experiments, teachers, parents and children rated the visual learner as more intelligent. In light of students repeatedly being shown to conform to the expectations placed on them, whether high or low, the dangerous implication here is that so-called hands-on learners may struggle to realise their potential, entirely due to an invalid intervention.
Rogowsky et al. (2015), in another study that failed to discover any empirical support for matching learning style to instruction, also suggest that advocates are doing students a disservice, this time because little consideration is given to their non-preferred learning style. They point to standardised tests as an example, asserting that as these are presented in a written-word format, it is crucial that all students are provided with plentiful written material practice - not just the ‘visual’ ones.
If we stop for a moment and take a step back, it does appear at the very least rather silly to assume that we need only rely on a single sense to learn. Imagine, for example, a trainee chef being taught to only use their sense of smell when cooking, ignoring vision, taste, touch and sound. It would be absurd. Surely, their combination is what brings about the best results; and indeed, this conclusion is backed up by neuroscience research. Dekker et al. (2012) explain that what we know about how the brain works (and we don’t know nearly as much as some educators think we do) doesn’t support the notion that we can isolate our senses as we please. Yes, different areas of the brain receive different kinds of information; its interconnectedness, however, means that it’s simply not realistic to think we can learn via one stimulus alone.
Where does this all leave language teachers, then?
Well, the neuroscience research clearly lends support to multisensory learning, already popular among teachers working with students with learning differences such as ADHD or dyslexia.
But, most urgently, it’s time to abandon learning styles. Don’t get me wrong: it is absolutely true that not all students are the same, for a variety of reasons, and there may be occasions when a particular student may benefit from a particular language item being tackled in a particular manner. However, as Pashler et al. (2008) conclude, ‘Given the capacity of humans to learn, it seems especially important to keep all avenues, options, and aspirations open for our students, our children, and ourselves. Toward that end, we think the primary focus should be on identifying and introducing the experiences, activities, and challenges that enhance everybody’s learning.’
This isn’t the first article on the deep-rooted myth of learning styles, and it won’t be the last. If, however, you, dear reader, now give a different answer to the opening question, it will have achieved its purpose.
References
Briggs K and Mayne R (2018) The Problem with Learning Styles: Debunking the Meshing Hypothesis in English Language Teaching https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/the-problem-with-learning-styles-debunking-the-meshing-hypothesis-in-english-language-teaching (Accessed November 2024)
Dekker S, Lee N, Howard-Jones P, and Jolles J (2012) Neuromyths in Education: Prevalence and Predictors of Misconceptions Among Teachers. Frontiers of Psychology 3(429)
Dunn R and Dunn K (1972) Practical Approaches to Individualizing Instruction: Contracts and Other Effective Teaching Strategies. Parker Publishing Company, New York
Krätzig G and Arbuthnott K (2006) Perceptual Learning Style and Learning Proficiency: A Test of the Hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology 98(1):238-246
Lethaby C and Harries P (2016) Learning Styles and Teacher Training: Are We Perpetuating Neuromyths? ELT Journal 70(1):16-27
Pashler H, McDaniel M, Rohrer D and Bjork R (2008) Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 9(3):105-119
Rogowsky B, Calhoun B and Tallal P (2015) Matching Learning Style to Instructional Method: Effects on Comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology 10(1):64-78
Sun X, Norton O and Nancekivell S (2023). Beware the Myth: Learning Styles Affect Parents’, Children’s, and Teachers’ Thinking About Children’s Academic Potential. npj Science of Learning 8(46)
