Learning Styles are "Bunk"!

Seán posted a comment on an earlier post of mine about learning styles and linked to his views on the subject. I thought I would reply.

Here's a devastating scientific criticism of the popular but groundless VAK learning style theory, which also attempts to explain why teachers love it, despite its complete lack of supporting evidence.

While the debunking of learning styles once and for all would be welcome, I would question that teachers "love" them. In my experience their use is down to an expectation that tutors use the popular methodology and in many cases it is an institutional *procedure* and has to be followed. This is what Frank Coffield (2008) would call "tactical compliance".

I think often we slavishly get students to complete the learning styles tests and file away the results, so we can bring them out when Ofsted (or whoever your education inspectorate is) comes along to prove that we 'really do care about diversification in our teaching'.

That learning styles should make much if any difference to teaching approach may well be dubious. Frank C certainly has my respect. But that they are "love[ed]" by the teaching profession at large is, certainly in my experience, a nonsense.

We do it because we are told to (because line managers and quality auditors expect/demand it).

If learning styles are "real" in any sense - even being that learners do have "preferences" or find it easier to learn in one way rather than another then they must have some value in that sense. The issue is how to apply it. But the hard reality is that no state education system has the funds, and no teacher the time, to tailor every subject to the whims of each and every student's preference in detail.

Only a superhuman could actually apply the required level of personalisation in any meaningful way. So we lip serve the tests just as we lip serve our application of their results.

I generally agree with Seán's comments in his working hypothesis that:

...a mixture of types of material and techniques seems likely to maximise the possibility of learning, and interestingness of delivery...

But I would put it the other way round - a mixture of types of material and techniques seems likely to maximise the interestingness of delivery and therefore the possibility of learning.

In my own experience of teaching and observing others, the approach to applying learning styles has been diluted to pretty much that. Use a variety of approaches (so much testing finally results in what was common sense to most of us anyway).

The final reality is of course that once a learner leaves education no one, and I mean NO ONE, is going to care for their learning preferences. They must simply get on with the job. So the final value for any learning style profile, (if you accept that they have value), may be to identify a learner's area of weakness and therefore area of required development. If they are poor at Kineasthetic - they may simply have to get better at it - their future boss simply won't care to make special allowances for them - they can either do the job or they can't.

Having said all that, while I have to do it there's no harm in seeing what correlations appear as part of teacher training - don't you find it interesting?

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Finally I would like to thank Seán for his comment, otherwise I might have missed the Frank Coffield report he mentions, which is by far the best education read I have come across in a long long time - reference below. Thanks Seán... and good luck with the ongoing battle against the unnecessary.

Frank Coffield (2008). Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority.... London: Learning and Skills Network. 51

Learning Styles, Hidden Secrets

Learning style questionnaires, if we are not careful, can be little more than a technicality, especially in my area. After all, how many ways can you teach someone to draw? Explaining how only goes so far, this is not English comprehension, you have to get the students to see it, and do it.

Typically we have students for art that have high visual and high kineasthetic prefference, and this makes sense given what art & design entails. Typically they have a lower relative auditory preference. Something like this:



This is what we expect for art. However we have 2 students with the reverse.



When they clearly have a preference for auditory learning, and they are less strong on a visual or kineasthetic approach, why choose Art? I might expect this profile from an English Literature student or something.

A quick peep at their Literacy diagnostic showed them both to still have strong L2 literacy skills, with one of them exhibiting some L3 literacy skills. So, I ask again, why Art?

I believe the answer is that they both have a disability which makes learning via their preferred method difficult. One is Dyslexic and the other Dysgraphic (writing is an issue).

Basically, they don't have as strong a natural leaning to learning art the way art learning works (visually, and by doing), so it seems they picked art because their disability means they are prevented from learning other subjects that better match their natural learning style.

These learners will need particular help (lots more describing than is normal for an art student) since in some ways it appears that they are choosing to go against their own nature by doing art. (That's my view, but I welcome your comments.)

I wonder how much support this lends to my theory that some students choose art, not because they are great at it, but because they simply found other subjects even more difficult (on account of Dyslexia for instance). What do you think?