Learning styles: do students learn better in their own style?

Where the idea came from

Learning styles is the idea that each person learns best through a particular mode, and that teaching should be matched to it. The most familiar version in schools sorts students into visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners; there are many other models, with dozens of questionnaires.

The specific claim that matters for teaching is what researchers call the meshing hypothesis: a visual learner taught visually will learn better than if taught by listening, and an auditory learner the reverse. That's different from saying people have preferences, which they plainly do.

The idea spread widely. Pashler and colleagues describe it as encountered at every level from kindergarten to graduate school, with a thriving industry of learning-styles tests, guidebooks for teachers and professional development workshops built around it.

What the research says

In 2008 Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer and Robert Bjork were asked to judge whether learning-styles teaching is supported by evidence. They set out what a fair test needs: sort students by style, randomly assign students of each style to different teaching methods, give everyone the same test, and look for a specific crossover, where the method that's best for one style is not the best for another.

They found plenty of studies showing that people express preferences, and evidence that people differ in specific aptitudes. But they found virtually no evidence of the crossover. Very few studies had even used a design that could test it, and several of those that did found results that flatly contradicted the meshing hypothesis. They concluded there was no adequate evidence base for using learning-styles assessments in general education, while noting that not every version of the idea had been tested.

Studies since then have run the test. Beth Rogowsky, Barbara Calhoun and Paula Tallal followed the design Pashler and colleagues described. College-educated adults' auditory and visual preferences didn't predict their listening or reading comprehension, and when they were randomly assigned to learn from a digital audiobook or an e-text, matching the format to their preference made no difference, immediately or two weeks later.

Abby Knoll and colleagues found something revealing: people who said they preferred words felt they had learned word pairs better, and people who preferred pictures felt they had learned picture pairs better, but their style had no relationship with what they actually remembered. Joshua Cuevas's review of research published after 2008 found the more methodologically sound studies tended to refute the matching idea.

Why it hangs on

It matches experience. Everyone has preferences, and learning in a preferred way feels easier. Knoll and colleagues' finding explains why the idea feels true: style is tied to how learning feels, not to how much is learned.

It sounds like good teaching. Learning styles seems to respect differences between students, which teachers rightly care about. Rejecting it can sound like rejecting differentiation. It isn't: differentiating by what students know and can do is a different thing from sorting them by a preferred sense.

It's widely taught. Cuevas found learning styles still presented in teacher education texts, and Sanne Dekker and colleagues found that teachers interested in brain science believed about half of a set of common neuromyths, especially ones linked to commercial programs. Knowing more about the brain didn't protect them; myths spread through enthusiasm, not ignorance.

What to do instead

Pashler and colleagues' advice was to put limited time and money into practices with a strong evidence base. For teachers, that means:

• Choose the format that suits the content, for everyone. Maps and diagrams for geography, spoken language for pronunciation, hands-on materials for measurement. The content, not the student's style, decides.
• Differentiate by what students know. Use quick checks to find who needs more support or more challenge on a skill. See differentiated instruction.
• Use techniques that help everyone remember: retrieval practice and spaced practice.
• Teach new material clearly and in small steps, with modeling and guided practice. See explicit instruction.

It's fine to ask students how they like to learn and to offer choices; preferences matter for motivation. Just don't expect matching to raise achievement, and don't label a child as one kind of learner.

Questions teachers ask

So are learning styles completely made up?

Preferences are real: people will tell you how they like to learn. What the research doesn't support is the claim that teaching matched to those preferences makes people learn better. Pashler and colleagues found virtually no evidence for it, and later tests found no benefit.

Should I stop using visuals or hands-on activities?

No. Use them when they suit the content, for every student. A diagram helps everyone understand a cycle; manipulatives help everyone understand place value. What the evidence rejects is choosing the format by a student's supposed style.

What about students with disabilities?

Accommodations for a disability, such as audio for a student who can't read print, or enlarged text for low vision, are a different matter from learning styles, and they belong in a student's plan wherever they're needed. Learning styles is about typical learners' preferences.

My school asks us to plan for learning styles. What should I do?

Plan for what the research supports: varied formats chosen to fit the content, differentiation by what students know, and retrieval and spaced practice. You can share this page and its sources with colleagues; every study is linked.