Briefing: Do children have preferred learning styles?

The idea that children possess specific learning styles and that by differentiating to that style pupils make more progress in their learning is a popular one amongst teachers. However, the evidence supporting the existence of learning styles is poor. Psychometric attempts to define and measure learning styles have been found to lack validity and have not been evaluated with rigour. Popular ideas about learning styles based on sensory modality (e.g. VAK) appear to be pseudoscientific and provide no valid pedagogic value whatsoever.

Learning styles and pedagogy

The interest in learning styles is based on the appealing idea that our students would make more progress if we could fit the way we teach them better to their individual strengths in the way that they learn. Thus, if we could diagnose these preferred styles, get students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and design our teaching to suit them, we might enhance their progress and help motivate them to become more independent in their learning.

This led to a large number of attempts to classify and measure individual learning styles. In a systematic review of these attempts, Coffield, Moseley, Hall, and Ecclestone (2004) examined 13 of the most influential learning style approaches. One example is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which examines personality factors like introversion and extroversion, and whether the person is more sensing or intuitive. Another example is the Jackson’s Learning Styles Profiler which broadly typifies individuals into initiator, reasoner, analyst and implementer.

These approaches typically use fairly lengthy, self-report inventories to diagnose learning styles. Many of them have made attempts to establish the validity and reliability of the measures used, yet the Coffield et al review found all of them wanting. They conclude that, even where this psychometric approach has been taken, the competing models frequently lack theoretical coherence and haven’t been evaluated with anything approaching rigour. They warn of the potential dangers of labelling students and accuse the field of making overblown claims in the rush to market these systems to universities. Perhaps the most pertinent criticism from the point of view of teaching was that none of the approaches to learning styles gave clear implications for pedagogy.

About the author:

Nick Rose teaches

psychology at Turnford

School in Hertfordshire.

This summary was adapted

from an article on the

Evidence into Practice blog.

The full version of the post

entitled ‘More nonsense

for teachers to avoid’ is

available here:

http://evidenceintopractice.

wordpress.com/2014/07/10/

more-nonsense-for-

teachers-to-avoid/

research ED

However, relatively few teachers in primary and secondary schools in the UK will have heard of these academic theories of learning style. Interest in schools has almost been entirely dominated by the idea that children have visual, auditory or kinaesthetic (VAK) learning preferences.

Visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning styles (VAK)

The idea that children have learning preferences based on visual, auditory and kinaesthetic senses has an intuitive appeal and continues to be widely believed within teaching. For example, Dekker, Lee, Howard-Jones and Jolles (2012) identified that 93% of UK teachers in their survey believed that ‘Individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style (e.g. auditory, visual, kinesthetic)’.

The origin of the VAK approach to learning styles is something of a mystery. Sharp, Bowker, and Byrne (2008) noticed that the types of questionnaires used to ‘diagnose’ VAK were nothing like the research instruments used in academic approaches to learning styles. VAK self-report questionnaires are very poorly designed and appear to rely on rather naïve questions. For example, a typical question on a VAK questionnaire used in schools is this:I tend to say:

a) I see what you mean b) I hear what you are saying c) I know how you feel

One possible origin of the interest in VAK is neuro-linguistic programming (NLP); a pseudoscientific approach to persuasion and rapport building which claims that linguistic cues (e.g. I see what you mean) and eye movements (e.g. looking up and to the right) give an insight into how a person’s subjective world can be manipulated.

However, rather than based in any evidence, it appears VAK travelled from school to school by word-of-mouth based on the authority and hearsay of other teachers.

In evaluating VAK, the Sharp et al (2008) paper does not pull its punches:

“VAK, as it appears to us, is, in many instances, shrouded in pseudoscience, psychobabble and neurononsense. VAK’s instrumentation, as far we have encountered it, is seriously flawed, never establishing any sense of validity or reliability. As such, it can lay no claim to any diagnostic, predictive or pedagogical power whatsoever. The labelling of children in schools as visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learners is not only unforgivable, it is potentially damaging, though the various authors associated with VAK are not to be blamed for how VAK has been taken and applied. Any evidence that VAK ‘works’, be it with instrumentation, activities or strategies, is, at the present time, entirely anecdotal.”

Willingham (2005) explains that the reason why VAK doesn’t work is somewhat subtle. Whilst it’s highly likely that children will differ in terms of their auditory and visual memory, in the main these differences are irrelevant. Most frequently, it is semantic processing (i.e. by meaning) rather than sensory that leads to gains in learning. In terms of sensory modality, he argues that we should find the modality best suited to the content – not the student.

“Material should be presented auditorily or visually because the information that the teacher wants students to understand is best conveyed in that modality. There is no benefit to students in teachers’ attempting to find auditory presentations of the Mayan pyramids for the students who have good auditory memory. Everyone should see the picture.”

With the poor validity of the questionnaires used for ‘diagnosis’, the lack of evidence supporting the claims and the potential dangers posed by labelling or stereotyping children’s learning ability, the strong advice would be to disregard learning styles as a method of differentiation in teaching.

For more information visit www.workingoutwhatworks.com

Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E. and Ecclestone, K. (2004) Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning. A systematic and critical review. Wiltshire, UK: Cromwell Press Ltd.

Dekker, S., Lee, N., Howard-Jones, P. and Jolles, J. (2012) Neuromyths in education: Prevalence and predictors of misconceptions among teachers. Frontiers in psychology. 3:429.

Sharp, J., Bowker, R. and Byrne, J. (2008) VAK or VAK-uous? Towards the trivialisation of learning and the death of Scholarship. Research Papers in Education. 23 (3), 293–314

Willingham, D. (2005) Ask the cognitive scientist: Do visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners need visual, auditory, and kinesthetic instruction? American Educator. Summer 2005

References