SALT LAKE CITY — If you've been told you're a visual learner — or an auditory or tactile one — you're not alone.
But it's not true, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Educational Psychology Thursday that shows the vast majority of people believe in the long-debunked notion that individuals inherently learn a certain way.
Belief in so-called "learning styles," presumably set at birth and largely impervious to change, has proven to be a myth that's practically unshakable, although experts say it can hamper actual learning. Studies over the course of many years have failed to find strong proof that people have different learning styles.
But parents and teachers continue to build lessons around them, lead researcher Shaylene Nancekivell, a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, told the Deseret News.
You can see that dividing people into these buckets can be really really detrimental. – lead researcher Shaylene Nancekivell
The downside to catering to unproven ideas about how an individual learns is that it prevents using evidence-based, best-practice teaching strategies that have been proven effective, she said.
Instead, people may waste time and money to use services, products and methods that target learning styles that are not real, said Nancekivell. And beliefs about learning styles can discourage students and stunt education because of the mistaken notion that people are programmed at birth to learn a certain way, which in turn predicts their future success in both school and the workplace.
"If I think I can't learn with my hands, I might not think I am able to learn a trade as a career," Nancekivell said. "You can see that dividing people into these buckets can be really really detrimental. Even in the short term, if I choose only to study in my 'learning style,' then I am probably not studying using best practices and that's not great for my learning outcomes."
In a press release from the association, Nancekivell noted that learning styles might be an appealing concept because it matches how people think about behavior. "People prefer brain-based accounts of behavior and they like to categorize people into types. Learning styles allow people to do both of those things."
Unpacking fiction
Nancekivell and her colleagues conducted a pair of online experiments with nearly 700 participants to identify levels of belief in learning styles. They found the belief ubiquitous, with more than 9 in 10 people believing the best learning occurs when people are taught in the way that they learn best, whether by sight or sound or touch.
Nancekivell said the research found two groups of believers: "Essentialists," who see learning style as "something you are born with, you can't really change and it predicts your life and career outcomes." The second group also believed in learning styles, but saw more flexibility and overlap, as well as environmental influence, rather than learning styles set at birth in stone.
The research didn't find differences in belief in based on study subjects' age, race, gender, parental status, income or other demographics.
It’s also a good excuse for parents to blame teachers and schools for their children’s poor study habits and for schools and teachers to blame makers of learning materials. – Paul A. Kirschner, professor emeritus of educational psychology at the Open University of the Netherlands
"Previous research has shown that the learning styles model can undermine education in many ways," the American Psychological Association noted in a press release announcing the new study.
"Educators spend time and money tailoring lessons to certain learning styles for different students even though all students would benefit from learning through various methods. Students study in ways that match their perceived learning style even though it won't help them succeed. Some teacher certification programs incorporate learning style into their courses, which perpetuates that myth for the next generation of teachers. Academic support centers and a plethora of products are also focused on learning styles, despite the lack of scientific evidence supporting them," the release said.
Downside to styles
“The real problem is that (belief in learning styles) robs children of opportunities to learn by branding or pigeonholing them as belonging to a specific group that cannot do certain things," Paul A. Kirschner, professor emeritus of educational psychology at the Open University of the Netherlands, told Newsweek.
“It’s also a good excuse for parents to blame teachers and schools for their children’s poor study habits and for schools and teachers to blame makers of learning materials,” he said.
Kirschner also wrote an article in Computers & Education, “Stop propagating the learning styles myth,” in 2016.
Indiana University School of Medicine researchers published a study debunking learning styles in 2018, according to Phys.org. Their study found teaching efforts tailored to a subject mattered, rather than emphasis on how students learn.
"Instead, there were specific study strategies, such as practising microscope work and using lecture notes, that were associated with better grade performance, regardless of students' learning style. Other activities, such as using flash cards, were associated with poorer performance, perhaps because they were a sign of learning by rote rather than deeper learning," the article said.
Wired magazine has also tried to bust the myth of unchanging learning styles:
"Convincing evidence for learning styles would show that people of one preferred learning style learned better when taught material in their favored way, whereas a different group with a different preference learned the same material better when taught in their favored fashion. Yet surprisingly few studies of this format have produced supporting evidence for learning styles; far more evidence (such as this study) runs counter to the myth. What often happens is that both groups perform better when taught by one particular style," wrote Christian Jarrett.
"This makes sense because although each of us is unique, usually the most effective way for us to learn is based not on our individual preferences but on the nature of the material we’re being taught — just try learning French grammar pictorially, or learning geometry purely verbally," he wrote.
Nancekivell's co-authors on the new study, also from the University of Michigan, are Priti Shah and Susan A. Gelman.