Brain Science: Are Learning Styles Valid?

This column is designed to explore how science can help usimprove teaching and learning in our organizations. Frequently, a scientificanalysis confirms our intuitions giving us the courage to continue along aparticular pedagogical path. At other times, however, scientific analysiscontradicts our views and we have to decide whether we are willing to abandonour point of view.

Learning styles and the learning-stylesindustry

During the last 30 years, the notion of learning styles hasbecome popular in corporate training and a substantial industry has emerged tohelp organizations apply these principles. This month, we will explore theconcept of learning styles and examine the evidence about its pedagogicaleffectiveness.

The learning-styles industry makes three fundamental claims:

1. Learners differ from one another in terms of theirabilities and interests.
2. Learners have preferred modes of learning new information. Thesemodes are often presented as continua such as impulsive vs. reflective, visualvs. auditory, linear vs. holistic, or reasoning vs. insight.
3. The final claim is that our students learn more if wesomehow match our teaching style to the student’s particular learning style.

It is worth noting that there is no agreed upon theory of whatconstitutes a learning style. The industry now includes more than 70 majorvendors (including Dunn and Dunn’s Learning Styles, Kolb’s Learning StyleInventory, and Honey and Mumford’s Learning Style Questionnaire) and thesevarious organizations define and sell measurement tools that help organizationsidentify a learner’s style and then help trainers tailor their training to eachstyle of learning.

Does it work?

Given the popularity of the learning styles approach, in 2008four researchers—Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork,a veritable dream team of America’s cognitive psychologists—conducted a meta-analysisof the learning styles literature. In a meta-analysis, researchers carefully review anentire domain of research and then use statistical methods to combine resultsfrom different studies in order to identify patterns, resolve conflicts, andestablish general truths.

Their analysis, which was reported in thejournal Psychological Science in thePublic Interest, came to three general and noteworthy conclusions. First,in any given classroom, learners do indeed differ from one another. Forexample, some learners may have more ability, more interest, or more backgroundthan their classmates.

Second, students do express preferences for how they likeinformation to be presented to them. For example, some people say they preferinformation presented visually whereas others say they prefer an auditorypresentation.

Third, after a careful analysis of the literature, theresearchers found no evidence showing that people do in fact learn better whenan instructor tailors their teaching style to mesh with a student’s preferredlearning style. Let me repeat that: The researchers found no evidence showingthat people learn better when an instructor tailors their teaching style tomesh with a student’s preferred learning style. Pashler and his colleaguesconclude that, although there is a vast commercial literature espousinglearning styles, few studies have used valid research techniques. Furthermore,they point out that the few experiments that that did conduct a validscientific test found results that “flatly contradict the popular meshinghypothesis.”

Pashler et al. acknowledge that some future experiment mightprove the value of the learning-styles methodology. But based on the 30 yearsof existing literature, “There is no adequate evidence-base to justifyincorporating learning styles assessments into general educational practices.” Basedon this finding, they suggest organizations “redirect limited educationalresources away from learning styles and into educational practices that have aproven ability to increase learning.” As you’d expect, these findings have beenunwelcome news to the learning-styles industry.

Lessons to be learned

Although meshing teaching to specific learning styles has notproven to improve our training programs, there remain three important lessonsto be learned.

Get to know your audience

People do indeed differ from each other in important ways, andresearch does support the idea that you should customize your training to beconsistent both with (a) people’s intellectual ability and (b) with theparticular interests of your audience. For example, if you are teaching effectiveleadership to a group of millennials, the research shows that you should usevocabulary that is within their reach. It also shows that you should useexamples that are relevant to their lives.

Good training is good for everyone

Great examples and activities are useful to everyone no matterwhat learning style they say they prefer. For example, do you have a great visualexample? Use it because it is going to benefit everyone whether they say theyprefer visual, auditory, or tactile learning. Do you have a demonstration thatmakes a point dramatically and directly? Use it, and everyone will gain from itwhether they are a linear or circular learner. Get the idea? Good teachingproduces good learning across all learners.

Beware of silver bullets

Finally, we probably need to be wary of silver bulletsolutions that promise easy answers to complex problems. All of us want to makeour training more effective, and it would be great if a simple assessment couldmagically improve learning and retention. As we have seen in this column,learning, retention, and transfer can be improved, but it requires a structuredand strategic program of training.

An invitation to comment

I know that a lot of people feel strongly about this topic andI want to hear your thoughts. What are you doing in your organization? Are youcustomizing training to mesh with employee’s learning styles? Please share whatyou are doing and why are you doing so.

Before offering criticisms, may I request you do two things?

1. Remember that I am just the messenger here, conveying theresults of important research by eminent scientists.
2. Please carefully read for yourself the article by Pashler and his colleagues. And as you read,keep in mind that these researchers are unbiased and they looked at all of theresearch before reaching the following conclusion: “There is no evidence tosupport the notion that meshing a teaching style with a learning style improveslearning or retention.” What you do with this fact, however, is entirely up toyou.

Digging deeper

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