I own a tutoring company and speak to hundreds of parents every year, and lots of them tell me their child is a certain type of learner. Perhaps he is an auditory learner, perhaps a visual one, or perhaps he is more physical. Often a teacher told them so at a young age, which is not surprising when belief in learning styles remains high among educators, and in my view the label does more harm than good. So why is the learning styles myth still everywhere in tutoring?
I want to say first that students can have preferences about how they like to learn. That is natural and not a problem at all, and the level of motivation during revision of course correlates with willingness to learn.
The trouble starts when a preference hardens into a label. It is an obvious point, but our brains are extremely plastic from a young age, so if learning preferences were real they would keep changing, and a rigid label handed out at seven starts to look shaky. There is great harm in telling an 8-year-old that he is kinaesthetic, because he may conclude for the rest of his time in education that a book is not the way he learns.
What the evidence says about learning styles
The theory has little base or foundation, so the best place to start is the evidence. A 2004 report for the UK’s Learning and Skills Research Centre identified 71 learning styles models and examined 13 of the major ones in detail, and it found very few robust studies offering reliable and valid evidence for them.
A few years later, a 2008 review by Harold Pashler and colleagues set out the test the theory would have to pass. Visual learners would need to do better with visual teaching and auditory learners worse, a crossover pattern. Very few studies had even used a method capable of running that test, and several of those that did found results that flatly contradicted the theory.
The funny part is that even when students have a supposed style, it makes little difference to how they do. A study of 142 first-year medical and dental students gave them the VARK questionnaire and found that more than half were multimodal learners, with no statistically significant differences in exam performance between learning styles.
Why is the learning styles myth still everywhere in tutoring?
Given that the theory had little empirical support 20 years ago and has little now, it is quite surprising how many teachers still believe it. A 2012 survey of 242 teachers in Dorset and Amsterdam found that 93% of the UK teachers endorsed it. My own sector is just as guilty, because if you search for a tutor you will find profile after profile promising to adapt to your child’s learning style, and it is a very common sales line.
Part of the reason it survives is that it feels true and comforting. There is a nice feeling in telling a parent that the teacher or tutor will adapt to their child’s learning style, because it creates a sense of personalisation, and I accept that this may have some indirect effect on confidence. A study reported by the British Psychological Society had students learn word pairs and picture pairs, and their preferred style made no difference to what they remembered, but it did make them more confident straight after studying. So the student feels their style is being met, the parents see a satisfied child, and nothing is properly assessed until the mocks come up.
Where the label causes harm
You may be wondering what the problem is if the label gives confidence a small boost. In my view the label becomes a ceiling, especially when educators believe in a sticky learning style. In two online experiments with 668 people, many of them educators, those who believed in learning styles split roughly evenly between seeing them as inborn, inherited, and wired into the brain and holding looser views. Educators who worked with younger children were more likely to take the fixed view.
This means a 7-year-old can be told they are an auditory learner by someone who believes it is down to biology. By the time they get to university, they have quietly decided that flashcards are not for them.
In some ways the child feels happy and believes the learning has been personalised and made more effective, but what has really been created is a fixed mindset story. People, in their true nature, tend to turn quite rigid in their views and not take on other styles if need be, as new information becomes apparent and their educational journey matures.
It also crowds out the things that work. Some study techniques are simply better than others, and it is plausible that a child will “prefer” the passive, easy ones if learning is not a focal point for them. If they double down on that style, I fear they quietly discard the harder methods that are actually proven.
What works better than a learning style
A review of ten study techniques rated them for how useful they are. Two came out on top, practice testing and spreading revision out over time, while self-explanation, interleaving, and elaboration were moderate, and rereading, highlighting, and summarising came out at the bottom. This is well known in education, but it gets drowned out when the focus is on giving a child a learning label.
It is also what Elizabeth and Robert Bjork call desirable difficulties. The techniques that feel most effortful and least flattering are often the ones with the greatest impact on learning, while the ones we feel fluent in, including those that match our supposed “style”, tend to do less.
What a tutor should do instead
The alternative is to use proven methods and match the method to the material and to the child’s gaps, rather than trying to fit a topic into a learning label. Geography needs maps, French pronunciation needs listening, and everyone benefits from the right mode for the topic. The first session should always be diagnostic, assessing what the child can and cannot do, and the teaching should follow from that.
Then use what the hard evidence shows. Start each lesson with a short quiz on last week to encourage retrieval practice, spread revision across weeks rather than cramming it, mix topics once the basics are secure, and show worked examples before expecting independent practice. None of this has the warm glow of a learning style, but it works, and results generally follow.
Confidence can be built in other ways too, and a competent teacher can do that in abundance without selling the learning styles fallacy to the parent. What I fear is simpler than a decline in exam results. It is the GCSE student I speak to, told years ago that he was an auditory learner, who decided flashcards were not for him and never found out he might be wrong.
FAQs
- Is the learning styles theory true? No. Reviews of the research have found no good evidence that matching teaching to a visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic label improves learning, although students can of course have preferences.
- Why do so many tutors and teachers still believe in learning styles? It feels true and comforting, it sounds personal, and it gives students a small confidence boost straight after studying, so it is easy to sell and rarely tested until the mocks.
- What harm can a learning style label do? It can become a ceiling, with a child deciding that books or flashcards are not for them, and it can crowd out harder methods that are proven to work.
- What should tutors do instead? Start with a diagnostic session, match the method to the material and the child’s gaps, and use practice testing, spaced revision, mixed topics, and worked examples.
Takeaway
A learning style label feels personal and kind, but the evidence says it does not improve results and it can quietly limit a child’s choices. Preferences are real and worth listening to, yet the best tutoring starts with what the child can and cannot do and uses methods that are proven. Dropping the label costs nothing, and it leaves room for the techniques that work.
