We formed groups of three using the cards we’d received: each group had an ‘M’, a ‘T’ and a ‘V’. Each person described a celebration three different ways. First, what we would hear: I described the cracking of a log fire, the clink of glasses and the rustle of paper. Second, how people would move: ripping paper, drinking wine, eating. Finally, what we would see: crackers, stockings and a pine tree. In the midst of life, I woke to find myself being trained in learning styles. Once I was certain what was going on (this was in Danish) and had stifled my astonishment, I tried to observe dispassionately.
Having retold our celebration visually, auditorily and kinaesthetically, we were asked which kinds of learning we had used. The presenter pointed to a different ‘part of the brain’ for each, the ‘Motor cortex’, ‘Temporallapperne’ and ‘Visual cortex’; we repeated each term while imitating her pointing, following the principles of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
We all have preferences, we were told – 30% of people prefer auditory learning, for example – but what works depends on the lesson’s content. “Students will have to write in the exam”, a trainee noted; but the presenter explained that students may remember something kinaesthetically but express it verbally. We were assured that, though Hattie had found learning styles have no effect, paying attention to diversity is powerful. Discussion over, we formed small groups and conceived activities employing different learning styles: in my group trainees engaged enthusiastically, but struggled to adapt their subjects to ‘auditory’ learning; the presenter suggested that ‘a moment of silence before a key point’ would be one way.
The enduring appeal of learning styles
It’s easy to mock; perhaps it’s more useful to analyse the enduring appeal of learning styles. Jack Schneider set out four criteria for research to reach classrooms: perceived significance, philosophical compatibility, occupational realism, and transportability (discussed by Gary Jones here). Learning styles have all four:
Perceived significance
Learning styles discuss the brain: few people can gainsay ‘neuroscience’ and this approach holds a ‘seductive allure’. They also offer a compellingly plausible explanation for the educational failure of some young people.
Philosophical compatibility
Trainees are often desperate to effect change in their schools; they are sometimes encouraged to believe they can do so from the outset. Learning styles fit this well, placing trainees in the vanguard of transformational practice. Trainees were encouraged to contrast themselves with teachers who have bored them; this memory of boredom is explained by too much talking and not enough kinaesthetic learning. Learning styles offer the trainee, keen to be inspirational, a radical, novel, fun way to do so.
Learning styles also emphasise individuality: “people are concerned that they, and their children, be seen and treated by educators as unique individuals” (even though there is more helpful research about the similarities of learners than their differences (Pashler et al., 2008)).
Occupational realism
On the one hand, crafting a kinaesthetic activity when students need to write an essay is a challenge; but it’s not a hard one (moving students holding sentences around maybe?). It’s certainly easier than paying close attention to the misconceptions students’ may have about the essay’s topic. I suspect learning styles are in a sweet spot: sufficiently clever-seeming and plausible to offer some challenge (and appear worthwhile), sufficiently simple (and malleable) to apply to anything.
Transportability
I’m sure the hour’s session was sufficient for trainees to understand and recall the three learning styles.
What is to be done?
One can point to the evidence that:
Students do not have different “learning styles.”
Deans for Impact (2015)
And pursue references to reviews which demonstrate conclusively that:
There is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number.”
Pashler et al. (2008)
Yet learning styles still thrive. So what might we do?
Inoculation
The Carter Review emphasised the importance of teaching trainees:
How to become intelligent consumers of research; this means teaching them where and how to access research findings, how to interpret and challenge research and how it can be applied in practice.”
This sounds great, but I’m not sure it’s sufficient. My experience of professional development suggests that most teachers’ interest lies in how strategies may improve their classroom, not the evidence behind them, perfectly fairly. Moreover, this places the burden of spotting poorly-evidenced practices on those least able to do so: by definition, if they knew enough to judge, trainees wouldn’t be in the session.
Substitution
Criticising unevidenced practice seems insufficient (particularly if learning styles are common in schools, as in Denmark). Asking people to stop thinking about learning styles is not enough; we need to offer simple, evidence-based heuristics for trainees – or they will compose their own, implicitly or explicitly. Sharing clear, evidenced-based structures like Rosenshine’s (2010) ‘Principles of Instruction’ and Deans for Impact’s (2015) ‘Science of Learning’ is one approach. Turning this research into practical guidance, whether in the form of checklists or collections like Tom Sherrington’s is another. Whatever we choose, we must avoid the mystification of teaching as ‘too complicated’ to be susceptible to clear guidelines: the confusion this creates for trainees is ripe soil for zombie theories like learning styles.
Publication
If we accept that trainees are not best-placed to assess the evidence informing their training, we must make it easier for others to do so. For this, a prerequisite is having teacher training organisations and professional development providers publish their ‘learning bets’ and course reading lists. This permits neat (if depressing) studies like Pomerance et al.’s (2016) paper which analysed the content and techniques to which trainees in the US are exposed (and found them wanting). Sharing curricula and reading lists would be useful in its own right, it would also leave trainers open to critique, critique organisations should welcome if they wish to improve.
Conclusion
I now understand better the enduring appeal of learning styles. Breaking up lessons and varying activities is no bad thing, but learning styles lead teachers down blind alleys in which they misdiagnose barriers to learning and waste lesson planning time on ineffective approaches. Waiting for good ideas to out-compete poor ones seems insufficient: we need to help them on their way.
Update
This post was edited on 2nd September, 2016; at the request of the training provider, the original image, which came from the provider’s workbook, was removed. The caption read:
“Teacher: It just doesn’t feel natural for me to involve their bodies in learning. Researcher: Now it’s not about you but about your students’ learning, so what strategies would be good for you to use when you want to activate their motorcortex?”
When I worked in a Danish folkeskole, I was deployed as a teaching assistant in some of my lessons where I wasn’t needed for cover. The language lessons were always the same (and I worked with a lot of age groups, teachers etc): one student reads a paragraph from a page, another child paraphrases/translates and then exercises. Teacher helps those who asks for it. They go from page one of the textbook in August and steadily work through it until June.
It’s fine. It works for them, I guess (Though the Danes have a word for students that are so over it by the time they reach their early teens: “skoletræt”)
I see this interest in VAK (which has been going on for at least the eight years I have been in the country), as an attempt to blind people with pseudoscience to encourage them to increase novelty in lessons. There are some awesome resources out there for “kineaesthetic” learners which look great on tv when the students are using them.
There won’t be a fightback from Danish teachers about zombie theories like there has been in the UK. Danish teachers just aren’t all that into unpaid professional development. They weren’t particularly before 2013 and they certainly aren’t now that they had a lockout over how valuable the gov see their work/life balance. The only way there could be an evidence based movement is if the politicians willed it and made it a priority for schools which fed into the pd opportunities. Fat chance, right?!
Such an interesting article and an observation, thank you for sharing your experience and how you have analyzed the topic. In fact, improving the teaching styles and helping students improve their learning styles as well is really important. It is time for a change and we are happy that there are people that try to make the change.
I’m sure it’s the simplicity that is both the appeal, and the problem. VAK matching is neat (but wrong) at the theoretical level, but simple enough to apply in planning and teaching. If I go back to when VAK started to become prominent, I am not aware of much else that teachers would have been likely to encounter that met both these criteria of being theoretically neat and simple to implement. As an example, AfL is fairly simple theoretically but really hard to apply well, which is at least one reason it hasn’t had it’s advertised effect within the education system. There are now some alternatives that are well-supported by research and simple to implement ; for example retrieval practice, linking graphics with verbal descriptions, use of worked examples, including integrating them with independent practice, and at a curriculum design level, interleaving. Perhaps when these replacements become better known, VAK matching will fade; until then I suspect that it’s a long struggle to beat it just by presenting contradictory evidence – too much loss aversion if it just leaves a big hole.