The Myth of Learning Styles - A Review

Dr. Ashwin Kumar

Knowledge of learning styles remains popular among students and educators,

especially in the current climate of expanding new pedagogical technologies and
multimodal contexts of delivery. Educators often maintain that learning styles
are the preferred way their students like to go about doing the process of their
learning. Furthermore, educators often define their students learning style as
their distinctive and habitual ways of acquiring knowledge, skills or attitudes
through study or experience often via the preferred bodily sense through
which our students receive information, whether it be visual, auditory, or
kinaesthetic. Defining students learning style is often confusing and is often
based upon the students particular style of learning from the typical way they
approach learning. Educators often typify students learning styles in order to
strengthen their educational experience: learning could be improved by
matching the mode of instruction to the preferred learning styles of students.
Riener and Willingham (2010) in The Myth of Learning Styles argue that, as
there is no credible evidence that learning styles exist, a belief in learning
styles is not necessary for pedagogic practices. They maintain that students
differ in their abilities, interests, and background knowledge, but not in their
learning styles. Moreover, they maintain that students may have preferences
about how to learn, but no evidence suggests that catering to those
preferences will lead to better learning. They recommend that educators
should apply this to the classroom by presenting information in the most
appropriate manner for content and for the level of prior knowledge, ability,
and interests of our students. While this thought provoking theoretical paper
invites educators to question their assumptions on the existence and
pedagogic practice of learning styles theory, it falls short in providing any
scientific evidence by way of experimental studies to prove that theories of
learning styles are a myth.

Riener and Willingham (2010) conceptualise learning styles using the popular
sensory definition of preferred bodily sense through which one receives
information, whether it be visual, auditory, or kinesthetic (p.32). They claim
that at the center of learning-styles theory is this: Different students have
different modes of learning, and their learning could be improved by matching
one's teaching with that preferred learning mode (p.35). They discuss three
claims of learning-styles proponents that they maintain as having universal
consensus based on a wealth of evidence (p.34): 1) learners are different
from each other, these differences affect their performance, and teachers
should take these differences into account; 2) learners have preferences
about how to learn that are independent of both ability and content and have
meaningful implications for their learning, and 3) learning could be improved
by matching the mode of instruction to the preferred learning style of the
student.
Riener and Willingham (2010) maintain that the popularity of the belief in
learning styles is due to three key reasons: 1) a belief in learning styles
persists because the general claims that learners do differ from one another is
true; 2) a belief in learning styles fits into an egalitarian view of education, and
3) learning-styles theory has succeeded in becoming common knowledge due
to its widespread acceptance (p. 34). Furthermore, they believe in the
importance and value of questioning our popular belief in learning styles
theories and offer three key reasons: 1) the belief has the potential to shape
and constrain the experience that students have in the classroom; 2) learningstyles theory is sometimes offered as a reason to include digital media in the
classroom and that it may not be necessary to tailor media to different
learning styles; and 3) when planning a lesson to particular groups of
students, it may be a waste of time assessing learning styles, especially when
that valuable time could be better used in assessing students background
knowledge.
In summary, Riener and Willingham (2010) provide a thought provoking
discussion in inviting educators to question their assumptions on the
existence and pedagogic practice of learning styles theory. However, they fall

short in providing any scientific evidence via scientific studies to prove that
theories of learning styles are a myth. Any credible non-validation of learning
styles based theories requires a robust experimental methodology capable of
testing the validity of learning styles applied to education.

Reference:
Riener, C., & Willingham, D. (2010) The Myth of Learning Styles. Change:
The Magazine of Higher Learning, 42(5), 32-35