Cover image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
By Megan Sumeracki
As a learning expert, I (Megan) still get asked about learning styles all the time. Recently I was chatting with a colleague and was excited to tell her that I’m getting through so many more books now that I’ve fully embraced audio books. She smiled at me and said, I think somewhat nervously, remind me again why learning styles isn’t a thing?
I get it! Learning styles is so tricky because it feels like it is real. In some ways it is—we have learning preferences. There IS more than one way to learn. It’s just that matching those preferences is not needed to maximize learning, and combining the various ways to learn helps everyone.
In this digest, a round-up of Learning Scientists resources and resources by others all about the myth of learning styles and the harm it can do to embrace this myth.
Learning Styles: A Misguided Attempt to Highlight Individual Differences in Learners by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel
One of our early and most popular posts on learning styles, individual differences, and the individual differences that we should probably pay more attention to.
Dual Coding and Learning Styles by Megan Sumeracki
A post highlighting the similarities, and importantly the differences, between dual coding (evidence-based) and the learning styles matching hypothesis (myth)
Learning Styles vs Dual Coding: A Battle of Two Theories, a video by Doug Neill (Verbal to Visual)
This video is fantastic, I think. They cover a paper by Cuevas and Dawson (2018) that pits learning styles and dual coding against one another.
If you want other resources covering the Cuevas and Dawson (2018) paper, you can check out this Learning Scientists Blog post written by Megan Sumeracki, and this episode on the Learning Scientists Podcast.
Catering to Learning Styles Isn’t Just Ineffective: It Can Harm Learning by Cindy Nebel
Another post of ours covering learning styles and the harm that perpetuating this myth can do. You can also check out this Learning Scientists Blog post written by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel on the potential harm of the learning styles myth.
How do Learning Styles Affect Learning Predictions? by Megan Sumeracki
Spoiler alert: learning styles can cause problems!
We’ve talked about learning styles again and again and again. I’m sure at least some of you are getting sick of talking about it. I can’t wait until every learner and educator is so sick of hearing about it that learning styles is no more. I mean, surely we’re done debunking this myth, right? I wish that were the case. But I get asked about this regularly in my classes and still see things pushing the myth online.
If you’re NOT sick of this topic, and you’ve read this far and still want more, below are some older digests related to this topic:
Weekly Digest #9: How to Talk About Learning Styles (this one is from 2016, when The Learning Scientists Blog was only a few months old!)
Weekly Digest #124: Pesky Learning Myths
Click here to search all Learning Scientists Blog posts tagged “Learning Syles”
