The Myth of Learning Styles

The concept of a 'learning style' is used to describe the preferred way, or process, that a student uses to identify and integrate information. In other words, the way a student seems to learn most often or most effectively is often called his or her learning style.

For example, you may have heard of visual learners or verbal learners. These terms describe what is commonly thought of as a particular learning style. From the number of measuring devices and tests available now — and more are being developed constantly — we are presently able to identify more than 100 different types of learning styles.

It is a commonly held belief that each learning style is the way that that student learns best, and that as educators we must learn how to serve the needs of these students best by changing the way we teach, the way we present material, the environment of the classroom and our expectations of these students.

But what if there really isn't much difference between these learning styles? What if they come from a fairly common root? What if we are in fact doing more harm than good when we identify a specific and concrete learning style best for a student?

If learning styles are actually quite similar, then the identification of a learning style would be seen as an observation of the student at that particular instant in his or her life. This observation, or measurement would become merely a snapshot of the student at the time her or she was tested, instead of a hardened in stone, particular, specific, discrete learning style not to be changed but to be served.

Most new trends in education suggest that the teacher should pay particular attention to the learning styles of students, should adjust teaching modalities to these various styles, and should use learning style categories to identify behaviour and predict future behaviours of certain students.

Some models even use their particular categories to help the teacher, co-worker or parent, 'understand' others. ('Now that I know that Harry is a Structured Abstract, I understand why he acts as he does.') Currently these theories are hot and both educational and industrial psychology publications abound with articles, presentations, and new research findings on the subject.

I object to this trend and to these learning style categorizations on a number of grounds.

Primarily I object to the behavioural concept that takes control from the student and places that burden upon the teacher, parent and administrator. By assuming that a student is powerless to learn effectively unless we spend vast amounts of money and time servicing his assumed learning style, we endorse the concept that change must come from outside, not from within, the individual.

This concept does not allow for the role of volition, change or self-awareness in the consciousness of students. Supporters of these theories suggest that by merely modifying the environment and changing the actions of teachers, parents or co-workers, we can affect change in the subject. In suggesting this, they remove personal responsibility and the need for students to understand their own minds, they entrench more and more power into the hands of others, and they further erode the possibility that the students will gain an increased sense of self-esteem by their own actions.

I also object on practical grounds. Given these requirements, most teachers would be physically, intellectually and emotionally incapable of meeting each and every student's individual learning style needs. Depending upon the test one used to identify these needs, it is possible that in a class there might be 30 different learning styles identified. It would be interesting to write out that lesson planner!

Assuming that there were no interruptions in a 90-minute class, it might be possible for the teacher to spend three minutes serving the individual needs of each student. That amounts to approximately 12 minutes per week.

We lose something very important when we focus too rigidly on the concept of a specific, concrete and unchangeable learning style. We miss the fact that many, if not most, learning styles may be merely the result of how well the student has learned to think.

If we consider the process of thinking, we will soon see that such skills as those listed below are the prime movers in a child's process of learning, not the child's learning style. Preferences in individual learning styles, with the exception of cases where the student has a frank learning disability, can usually be understood in the light of these thinking skills.

• Focus and Identification: The process of seeing the subtle similarities and differences between things.
• Generalization: Making a general statement about these similarities and creating new categories. For example, tables and chairs are concrete things that can stand by themselves and need no further explanation — unless you recognize that there are similarities and organize the similarities into a category called furniture. This is generalization.
• Transfer: Using the process of seeing similarities and differences to create new categories in another area. For instance, hockey and bowling are both sports.

A child who cannot generalize well, or who prefers more concrete concepts, will not understand metaphor well, and will obviously not prefer the more divergent choices that require an understanding of symbols or analogy. This student can thus be identified as a concrete or structured learner by one process (Kaufman) or a concrete sequential thinker by another (Gregoric).

In truth, this is merely a student who, once he or she learns to think more effectively, will begin to generalize, understand metaphor and use analogy. Then, if one tested this very same student, one would miraculously find that there had been a change in learning style.

Extending this reasoning into virtually every model of learning style identification, one soon begins to recognize that underlying these various learning styles is a process of thought that may be shaping the 'style' itself, instead of the other way around.

Continue reading Learning Style Myths Part 2.

By Dr. Nick Whitehead

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