I have written elsewhere on my blog about this question. Over the past decade (plus) I have reviewed what must be hundreds of applications for HEA/ AdvanceHE fellowships, supported applications and taught on postgraduate certificate courses. However, despite the work of Coffield et al (2004) published two decades ago the idea of learning styles seems to be a prevalent as ever.

Over the past decade (plus), I have reviewed what must be hundreds of applications for HEA/AdvanceHE fellowships, supported applications, and taught on postgraduate certificate courses. However, despite the work of Coffield et al. (2004) published two decades ago, the idea of learning styles seems to be as prevalent as ever. (See also Pashler et al 2008).

I’ll start by saying this blog post is partly speculative and partly autobiographical.

The first peer-reviewed education paper I ever published referenced learning styles in the context of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity (Canning, 2005). That paper examined the idea of disciplinarity with regard to quality assurance and its challenges for interdisciplinary area studies courses. I not only accepted that students have learning styles, but also that each discipline is likely to be more suitable for some learning styles than others (Bradbeer, 1999, p. 388). It would therefore follow that interdisciplinary courses might be problematic if they incorporated different disciplines which support students with different learning styles.

Bradbeer (1999, 394) concludes:

Barriers to interdisciplinarity arise because of differences in disciplinary epistemologies, discourses and traditions of teaching and learning. Students also bring to bear very different learning approaches and styles. Some of these learning styles are much more adaptive to particular disciplinary knowledge structures than others. Students face a number of bewildering challenges as they first try to adapt to their chosen area of specialisation, then to move between it and other disciplines and finally to be able to work equally effectively in them all.

As a newcomer to educational development at the time, I sought to read widely around a range of pedagogic subjects. As an ‘immigrant’ to the discipline of education, I was aware that there was a lot I did not know. I searched the education literature looking for the works of Kolb and Honey and Mumford – to my amazement, I did not find anything. I had assumed these much-discussed theorists would have produced a substantial peer-reviewed literature, but there was nothing to be found. Just because something does not appear in a peer-reviewed journal does not automatically make it wrong of course, but a lack of peer-reviewed articles surprised me.

Although originating in the 1970s, ideas of learning styles seem to have taken off in a big way after I left school in the 1990s. I did not come across the idea until I started working in higher education. I had not picked up on the idea during my university career up to that date, but it seemed to be the ‘big thing’ in education pedagogy. However, 20 years later, why am I still reading AdvanceHE fellowship applications with references to learning styles?

• I suspect that people write things like ‘I tailor my teaching practices to reflect different learning styles’ because they think that is what the people marking the applications want to read. The great thing about the idea of learning styles is that it comes across as very inclusive and ethical. I suspect they really mean is that they use a variety of teaching methods.
• Newer (and not so new) academics are of a generation that were sold the ideas of learning styles and were encouraged to believe they have a learning style. It was interesting hearing a teacher refer to my son as a ‘kinaesthetic learner’ because he didn’t like sitting still and preferred walking around.
• They may have been recently taught or mentored by people who told them that learning styles are a thing—this is the one that worries me most. However, there is no shortage of well-meaning references to learning styles on university webpages and plenty of psychology and educational websites promoting the idea.
• They are intellectually committed to the idea of learning styles, despite being presented with evidence about the challenges. This is the one I find most unlikely. There are still academics operating in the space of learning styles and learning patterns (e.g., Vermunt and Donche, 2017), but I have never seen Vermunt’s work referenced by those writing about learning styles.

Does it actually matter if teachers of students ‘believe’ in learning styles? Continue reading Why does the idea of learning styles persist? →