Many of us have heard impassioned arguments about “learning styles.” Whether determined by online quizzes, personal reflection, or teachers’ judgement, students all over the world know if they are auditory, visual, hands-on, or reading learners. These distinct categories often shape their study habits and academic choices. Yet a large body of research suggests that constraining oneself to a single “learning style” does not reflect our true learning patterns.
It’s important to define the original purpose of these learning style labels. In the early 1990s, a man named Neil Fleming began to sort through the evidence of a problem that had puzzled him for years: as a school inspector, he witnessed the widely varying effectiveness of teachers’ pedagogy. Why did some teachers fare so much better than others in terms of student engagement? What were they doing differently?
To explore this problem, he created a “modal learning preference” questionnaire named VARK, which stands for “Visual, Auditory, Reading, and Kinesthetic.” The 13-question quiz sorts students into four categories: students who learn best visually, through heard information, through reading, and through hands-on experience. Fleming posited that each of us have wildly different learning styles, and that our unconscious preferences impact our learning, retention, and overall performance. If teachers’ methods agreed with our learning style, he argued, our performance would substantially improve.
Fast forward to today: learning styles have become inextricable from education. They serve as a classification, yes, but also as a cage. In a 2009 study by the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers found that students who knew their learning styles actually tried to mold thought patterns to these styles. When asked a knowledge-based question, visual learners tried to create an image, and verbalizers attempted to form germane words. But results stayed constant — visualizers and verbalizers received the same results regardless of which learning style they used.
Since depending on one specific learning style doesn’t necessarily improve personal performance, it is important to avoid strictly classifying oneself as a particular learner. After all, drawing diagrams is probably futile for a French test but may be beneficial for biology. In other words, rather than focusing on concrete categorizations, we should experiment with different styles and techniques for different tasks.
I have had countless conversations where teachers are blamed for not interacting with a specific learning style. It is all too easy to blame a mismatch in learning styles for a student’s poor performance. Supposed “incompatibility” with a teacher’s style is merely a symptom of a fixed mindset. Instead of accepting and growing from failure, we often blame external factors, like learning styles. Although it may be easy to proclaim that there is only one way we can absorb information, we can’t allow ourselves to narrow down our style and scope of learning — this can actually be destructive to the learning process.
Since realizing this, I have become more mindful about my learning. Instead of rushing to use the technique that “fits” with my “learning style,” I reflect on strategy and best practices for completing tasks. This allows me to be a much more conscious learner. After all, we are here to learn, and it’s in our best interest if we invest ourselves fully in — and enjoy — our learning process. Unconstrained by category, we can embrace the new opportunities available to us. In short, by letting go of learning styles, we’ll learn that anything is possible.
Gayatri Rajan is a Junior from Mason, Ohio. contact the author at grajan22@andover.edu.
