Learning Styles: fable-ous and tragic

Learning Styles don't exist. Everybody knows this except people who don't. Their non-existence is mostly harmless. And occasionally tragic.

Learning Styles: meme or virus?
The idea that everybody has a 'Learning Style' is enchanting. It's feels right because it's so explanatory. In all the time that I've been teaching people to use Learning Styles and spreading the Learning Styles virus, nobody has ever questioned them.

This is not down to passive, happy-to-be-spoonfed learners.The idea of cognitive load seems to have struck many people I've worked with as an affront to their creativity and their chosen specialist subject, for example.

Why are Learning Styles so readily welcomed?

Daniel Willingham is a cognitive scientist
Daniel WillinghamM holds a PhD in cognitive psychology and wrote Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom. He also made a, for some, contraversial video which he put on YouTube called Learning Styles Don't Exist.

This puts us practitioners in a bind. Some people who seem like they're pretty qualified say there are Learning Styles. And then somebody who's a scientist says there aren't. Howard Rheingold's crap detection guidelines don't necessarily work here. It's PhD vs PhD. Obviously, some of the Learning Styles camp are peddling their wares. But not all of them. Some of them seem, well, okay.

Skepticism and sabotage
Here's a post/comment thread on Stephen Downes' blog where he has a lot to say on the subject of Learning Styles - or, more accurately, he criticises Daniel Willingham's 'facile treatment' of the subject on YouTube (and, elsewhere, Making up Facts). Like, Howard Rheingold, Stephen knows a thing or two about crap detection. Here are his own Principles for Evaluating Websites, for example, written in 2005. It's obviously something he's been thinking about a fair bit.*

But even if Stephen Downes is right and Daniel Willingham lying and facile (this is a very big 'if') then, surely, the dozens of Learning Styles Inventories can't all be right. But neither can they all be wrong? A practitioner who ignores all new ideas until they're 'scientifically proven' runs the risk of sabotaging innovation. Who are we to turn to?

Super-Frank
Professor Frank Coffield, of the Institute of Education, writes in the Guardian:

"Next time you see a learning styles questionnaire, burn it [we] produced two reports for the now defunct Learning and Skills Development Agency, which got cold feet and refused to launch them. It was afraid, as one of the government's "delivery partners", to back research it had itself funded, in case it upset the DfES.

Our reports reviewed, systematically, 13 models of learning styles and concluded that this area of research is theoretically incoherent and conceptually confused. I listed in the reports 30 dichotomies, such as "activists" versus "reflectors", "globalists" versus "analysts", and "left brainers" versus "right brainers". We should stop using these terms. There's no scientific justification for them.

We do students a serious disservice by implying they have only one learning style, rather than a flexible repertoire from which to choose, depending on the context."

*Gulp* That sounds fairly authoratitive. A 16-month study of 13 Learning Styles Inventories (whittled down from literally dozens more) carried out by four researchers with authority.

Here's links to the report from Frank Coffield. You should read it.

• Should we be using learning styles? Reference (84 pages, PDF, if in doubt read this one)
• Full report (182 pages, PDF)

Rather than show you extracts and summaries, I've taken some screenshots and added explanatory notes. Hopefully, you'll get a flavour of the report. (And want to read more.)

The first table shows the various flavours of Learning Styles.
Main takeaway: there are loads of them.

The second table shows how the Learning Styles measure up to a test of four 'minimal criteria'
Main takeaway: only one system meets all four. Some don't meet any. (

The final table shows the 'effect size of different intervention'
Main takeaway: even if Learning Styles were valid, we'd be much better of focusing on other things.

How did we end up in this situation?
To get a sense of the motives of people who are for learning styles see this review of the review [pdf] written by somebody who has produced their own Learning Styles Inventory. Here, in a footnote:

"Personally, I found that being relegated to the category of “derivative” somewhat undermined the review."

Yes, this person has decided that their own inventory being dismissed has somehow compromised the review. Incidentally, this person's job title is Head of Dyslexia, Literacy and Learning Styles.

If you'd like to check out their Learning Styles Interactive Diagnostic Screening, the PDF is here. One things for sure, people like Learning Styles even when they are 'derivative'. This Head of Learning Styles has plenty of testimonials. Why?

Lightbulb moment
In the comments of Learning Styles Do Not Exist by Clive Shepherd there's an interesting comment from Eric Wilbanks:

"Ahhh...now the lights are coming on. I think the rub here is on the word "style," which seems to be way too ambiguous for us to find the commonality of thought. My personal definition of learning "styles" is not as hard-lined as the "auditory, visual or kinesthetic" camp, and because of that I completely missed this idea in all the earlier posts. My own "theory" is that learning styles are more closely associated with personality "styles" than they are with a specific sensory method of data capturing. Does that help at all? Make things worse?"

The phrase Learning Styles is just too hard to resist because it's so very useful. It seems like we all have our own 'personal definition' and our own 'theory'.

Preaching and zealotry
In my own spreading of the myth that is Learning Styles, I've also been guilty of using my own 'personal definition'. In my case, Learning Styles meant VAK (never VAKt, oh no...). And VAK meant making sure learners were stimulated with visual aids, interesting conversation and physical activity. Nothing more. (An idea not dissimilar to what Baroness Greenfield is talking about in a piece quoted below.)

I certainly didn't practice any of the zealotry outlined in the Coffield report (seriously, read it and see). Like Eric Wilbanks, I basically made up my own version of the term. So did Francesca Elton. So have countless others. There is, of course, danger in co-opting scientific explanation. But it's feels right because it's so explanatory. And they give us a shared lexicon. Even Frank Coffield says:

"Learning-style instruments vary markedly in quality and some (eg Allinson and Hayes's CSI or Entwistle's Assist) could be used to start a dialogue with students about their learning, assessment and the purposes of education."

Surely, this is harmless? Why are all the bloggers and commentators so worked up about it?

Fable-ous but sometimes tragic
Learning Styles are too good to be true. But too truthy to be ignored. Learnining Styles have a teachable narrative. Learning Styles are Fable-ous. At least, my version of them is.

But when they're institutionalised it's a tragedy. Learning Styles don't exist but that doesn't stop them being a part of many practitioners' training, which is fine, and the way their performance is assessed, which is decidedly not.

Stunt Men and Women
I think most Learning Professionals have a fairly good idea what they're doing when it comes to Learning Styles. It's a bit of a car crash, but it's mostly okay.





Post Script - I know, this is a long post
Here's some more on Learning Styles. All of the below influenced the above, some more than others.

Edge of Stretch deserves special mention and has a couple of great posts about the Coffield Report and Learning Styles: the key points. You should follow @edgeofstretch on Twitter.

Debates, opinions and/or crap
Here's some more stuff on Learning styles. The posts are all good. Sometimes the comment threads are even better. All of the links below sparked debate.
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Donald Clark always has a lot to say. Here, he says that Learning Styles are flaky and they've been proved wrong. Here, apparently, Peter Honey (of Honey and Mumford fame) wasn't happy with Donald's presentation on the Coffield Report. This isn't surprising when you consider the fact that he makes a pretty good living out of their which will "make you a better learner". Finally, here's a subtle-as-anything post on Amazing Learning Style Research.

Baroness Greenfield doesn't like learning styles as this slightly breathless article attests.

"Humans have evolved to build a picture of the world through our senses working in unison, exploiting the immense interconnectivity that exists in the brain. It is when the senses are activated together - the sound of a voice in synchronisation with the movement of a person's lips - that brain cells fire more strongly than when stimuli are received apart."

Learning Styles are Bunk is, well, you get the picture from the title.

"The myth of learning styles is based on three faulty premises: learning styles are intrinsic, learning styles can be assessed, learning styles can be matched to instructional styles. Snyder points out that all three premises are untrue."

In the comments of Clive Shepherd's blog (already mentioned above) Robert Bacal asks:

"Does the learning styles construct have value in a) explaining events parsimoniously, and b) improving learning and instruction?"

Robert Bacal answers this questionon his own blog:

"You can’t really provide different activities for learners with different styles, for practical reasons, and it turns out you may not want to anyway.

The research on this is rather copious, and I’d guess that the majority of trainers have never looked at a single journal article on this topic, much less reviewed the field properly. It turns out there is some research to suggest that people learn better if you use a style that involves a mismatch with the preferred style. Generally speaking if you spend a year or two reading the body of learning styles research, you’d probably a) discover the findings are all contradictory, and b) realize that the reason for all the contradictory findings is that learning styles and matching simply are not very important for instructional success."

Finally, here's the two clips from Daniel Willingham:

Learning Styles Don't Exist:


Re:Learning Styles Don't Exist:



* Stephen Downes also wrote An Operating System for the Mind, which is as good a bona fide as I can think of. Read it.