Nancy L. Chick

SoTL Scholar, Scholarly Teacher, Faculty Developer

On ‘Learning Styles,’ Again (or Oh Dear, What’s This On My Shoe?) — Again

Originally posted on 2/15/2019 on the ROLLINSpire, the faculty development blog at Rollins College—now posted here with updates.

One of the many things we now know from the last few decades of research on how people learn is that prior knowledge is critical to the development of new knowledge. It can serve as a foundation for learning new things and making new connections, like a network of rope bridges through an unending forest canopy.

Or it can stubbornly inhibit new learning with sticky misconceptions, like fresh gum stuck on the bottom of our shoes, stopping us in our tracks until we can pry it loose. One such wad is the persistent misconception of learning styles, which keeps halting our pace as evidence-based conversations about effective learning strategies march forward with stronger and cleaner soles. Okay, I’ve exhausted the simile, so I’ll cut it loose and highlight some of what others have written.

What We Know

First, let’s go back to the aughts. The assumption that teaching to a student’s reported ‘learning style’ is effective was so widespread–and yet understood to be problematic on some level–that even The Onion satirized it in 2000. In 2008, Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork were commissioned by Psychological Science in the Public Interest to evaluate the evidence for this assumption and found that, despite many, many attempts, researchers have produced no evidence that, for example, teaching visually to purported ‘visual learners’ helps them learn. Despite many attempts. Zero evidence. The Association for Psychological Science (2009) then summed it up with “Learning Styles Debunked: There Is No Evidence Supporting Auditory and Visual Learning, Psychologists Say.”

Jump forward a decade, and we’re still messing with that wad of gum. A 2018 article in Scientific American tries again and goes further, pointing out “The Problem with ‘Learning Styles‘”: our efforts spent on learning styles–or helping visual learners by using more visual teaching strategies (etc.)–is better spent implementing learning strategies that have lots of evidence of effectiveness, such as retrieval practice, spaced practice, and elaborative interrogation.  Others are even pointing out how the myth does students a disservice–even harm–by wasting time and enforcing a limited self-label and “perpetuat[ing] failure” (Marshik 2015). In “Why Stubborn Myths Like ‘Learning Styles’ Persist,” Belenky (2017) attributes our fondness for learning styles to its support for our teaching autonomy, its simplicity, and our attraction to that which proves us right.

Let’s jump now into the 2020s. So much has been published about the lack of the evidence, the myth, and even the harm, but we’re still trying to pry that gum off of our shoes. Nowadays, the research is more focused on how to correct this persistent misconception. In “Why the Learning Styles Myth Appeals and How to Persuade Believers Otherwise,” Zrudlo (2023) explains that the myth is so stubbornly appealing because it connects with some reasonable intuitions: it resonates with legitimate beliefs that learners are different and unique, that teaching should be responsive and fair, and that understanding those differences can help us teach more effectively. The problem isn’t these commitments. It’s the unsupported conclusion that matching instruction to a presumed learning style fulfills them.

What We Can Do

So what can we do? In “Revising Teacher Candidates’ Beliefs and Knowledge of the Learning Styles Neuromyth,” Hattan, Grossnickle Peterson, and Miller (2024) offer experimental evidence that belief revision isn’t accomplished by refutation alone but instead by encouraging openness to changing one’s thinking and asking believers to engage with and summarize the evidence. I like the approach in Hattie and O’Leary’s “Learning Styles, Preferences, or Strategies? An Explanation for the Resurgence of Styles Across Many Meta-analyses” (2025)–specifically distinguishing between learning styles, preferences, and strategies:

  • Learning styles presume that people have relatively fixed ways of learning and will learn better when instruction is matched to them (not supported by evidence).
  • Learning preferences are simply ways people may prefer or enjoy learning, but a preference doesn’t necessarily lead to better learning.
  • Learning strategies by contrast are things learners deliberately do to learn effectively.

Rather than matching instruction to presumed styles or preferences, Hattie and O’Leary recommend helping students develop a repertoire of effective, evidence-based learning strategies and then adapt their strategies to the demands, complexity, and goals of the particular learning task. In the section below, I’ll share some
“Learning Strategies that Work” resources to help you help students develop this repertoire. Let’s hope another decade doesn’t pass by while we have this exact same conversation. I’d rather spend some time playing on those rope bridges in the forest canopy.

Learning Strategies that Work

If you want to read some of the studies about these strategies, here are a few of my favorites:

If you want something for your classes, The Learning Scientist‘s “Six Strategies for Effective Learning: Materials for Teachers and Students” offers three kinds of useful materials:

  • downloadable slides if you want to share any of these strategies as a presentation. (The page also includes stickers, but they have no real content.)
  • downloadable “posters” (or handouts) and bookmarks you can share with students, and
References

Nancy Chick