What is a learning style? How is it different from apreference? Should you change your approach to instructional design to suityour learners’ learning styles?
These are great questions. Defining learning styles is achallenge that has confounded learning and development experts for decades. Oneresponse is to acknowledge that a learning style is a preference, and instructorsshould tailorinstructional design to content and goals—not to individuallearners’ declared styles.
Why? Because there is no consensus on what learning stylesare. There is consensus that teachingto individuals’ self-identified learning preferences does not result in betterresults, though—consensus that eLearning Guild research director Jane Bozarthdocuments thoroughly in TheTruth about Teaching to Learning Styles, and What to Do Instead, a Guild Research report that isavailable for free download.
Some researchers trace the concept to learning styles topsychiatrist Carl Jung. Katharine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel BriggsMeyers, adopted some of Jung’s ideas and used them in their “people sortingtest”—which ultimately became the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, accordingto an interview with Merve Emre, author of a book on the test, ThePersonality Brokers.
Since then, researchershave found “endless overlapping and poorly defined dichotomies suchas ‘verbal’ v ‘auditory’ learners; ‘globalists’ v ‘analysts’; and ‘leftbrainers’ v ‘right brainers’, for which there is no scientific justification.”Even if all of the named “learning styles” were valid, expecting classroominstructors or instructional designers to teach to all of these, to prepare allcourse materials and eLearning in a way that could accommodate them, would beabsurd.
Frank Coffield, a retired professor of education, along withthree coauthors, cataloged 71 learning style models in 2004, grouping them intofive “families”:
- Those that hold that learning style is largely“constitutionally based”;
- Those that suggest that learning styles reflectfeatures of the learner’s “cognitive structure”;
- Those that view learning style as an element ofa “personality type”;
- Those that regard learning style as a “flexiblystable learning preference”; and
- Those that “move on” from learning styles to“learning approaches, strategies, orientations and conceptions of learning.”
The researchers placed the learning style models alonga continuum “based on the extent to which the developers of learningstyles models and instruments appear to believe that learning styles arefixed.”
At the left end of the continuum, the family of“constitutionally based” learning style models include those approaches thatinclude beliefs that genetics and “fixed, inherited traits” determine learningstyle. As one moves to the right along the continuum, or considers each familyof models, the amount of interplay between inherent characteristics andenvironmental influence grows. On the right-hand end of the scale, theoriesattribute more to motivation or environmental factors as well as other externalfactors—including instructional and curriculum design.
The enormous number of models and the broad range of factorsto which they attribute learning styles should be enough evidence to convincean instructional designer that learners are not hardwired to learn in a particularway and that attempting to tailor lessons to each learner’s style is futile.And, even if they did, Coffield’s extensive research has found “no hard evidence that students’ learning isenhanced by teaching tailored to their learning style.”
Thedesire to teach to learning styles endures, though, because the allure of finding just the right approach to turneach learner into a star student is irresistible to many educators. Rather thanexpending resources defining learning styles and molding curriculum to fit, Bozarthencourages L&D professionals to “expand our own toolkits and understanding of instructionalstrategies that do work, to come armed with evidence and better ideas, toincorporate them into our practice, and to help others become more fluent inrecognizing and creating better learning solutions.”
