Are learning styles real? What the research says

Learning preferences are real: most people can tell you whether they would rather read a manual, watch a demo or try it themselves. Learning styles, in the sense that matching teaching to your preferred style makes you learn more, are not supported by the research. Pashler and colleagues (2008) reviewed the evidence and found no solid support for that claim.

Preference is real, the promise is not

The two ideas get blurred, so it helps to separate them.

A preference is what you like. You might prefer diagrams to paragraphs, or talking a problem through to reading about it. Questionnaires such as VARK, developed by Neil Fleming (Fleming and Mills, 1992), measure this. VARK stands for visual, aural, read/write and kinesthetic.

The learning styles claim goes further. It says that if you are a "visual learner" and you are taught visually, you will learn more than if you were taught another way. Researchers call this the meshing hypothesis. It is the part that fails.

What Pashler and colleagues found

Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer and Bjork (2008) set out what a fair test of the meshing hypothesis requires.

1. Sort people by their learning style.
2. Randomly assign people of each style to different teaching methods.
3. Test everyone the same way afterward.
4. Look for a crossover: visual learners do better with visual teaching, and verbal learners do better with verbal teaching.

They found very few studies that used this design. Of those that did, several found results that flatly contradicted the hypothesis. Their conclusion was that there was no adequate evidence base to justify building teaching around learning styles.

Later studies point the same way. Rogowsky, Calhoun and Tallal (2015) measured 121 adults' preference for listening or reading, randomly assigned them to learn from a digital audiobook or an e-text, and found no significant link between matching method to preference and comprehension, tested straight away or two weeks later. Earlier, Coffield and colleagues (2004) identified 71 learning style models, examined the 13 most influential in depth, and found that few met basic standards of reliability and validity.

Why the idea persists

If the evidence is this clear, why do so many people believe it? Dekker and colleagues (2012) surveyed teachers in the UK and the Netherlands and found that more than 90 percent in each country agreed that people learn better when taught in their preferred learning style. A few reasons stand out:

• It matches experience. You do enjoy some formats more. Enjoyment feels like learning, even when test scores do not move.
• It is flattering. "You are not bad at this, you were taught the wrong way" is a kind message.
• It is easy to act on. Sorting a class into four groups is simpler than redesigning how everyone studies.

None of those make the claim true.

What does help people learn

The research on effective learning points to techniques that work for almost everyone, whatever their preference. Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated ten common study techniques and gave their highest rating, high utility, to two.

• Practice testing. Quizzing yourself beats rereading.
• Spaced practice. Several short sessions spread out beat one long session.

Two other principles hold up well:

• Match the method to the content, not the person. Geography needs maps. Pronunciation needs sound. A surgical skill needs hands.
• Combine words and pictures. Most people learn more when a clear diagram sits next to the explanation, whatever they prefer.

What to do the next time you learn something hard

Say you need to get up to speed on a new area fast, such as reading a profit and loss statement or learning a sales process. Skip the question "am I a visual learner?" and do this instead:

• Start with the format the content needs. Financial statements need numbers on a page. A sales call needs listening to real calls.
• Close the book and recall. After each session, write down what you remember before checking. The effort of retrieving is what makes it stick.
• Space it out. Three short sessions across a week tend to beat one long session on Sunday, as the spacing research above predicts.
• Explain it to someone. If you cannot explain it plainly, you have found the gap.
• Use your preference for comfort, not as a rule. If you like diagrams, draw one after you have studied the material. It will not replace the recall practice, and it may make the session more pleasant, which helps you come back.

Why we include VARK anyway

If learning styles do not improve learning, why is VARK one of the eight tests in our assessment? Because preference still says something useful about communication, and we are careful about what we claim for it.

Your VARK result is a quick read on how you like information delivered. That is useful at work, well away from any classroom:

• Someone with a strong read/write preference wants the memo before the meeting, not a slide deck during it.
• Someone with a strong kinesthetic preference may understand a process faster by doing it once than by hearing it explained three times.
• Someone with a strong aural preference may think best out loud, and read a quiet colleague as disengaged.

Knowing this helps you brief people and tells others how to brief you. It says nothing about your ability, and following it will not make you learn faster. Many people come out multimodal, with no single strong preference. That is a common and useful result.

Where VARK sits in our assessment

VARK is one of eight tests in our assessment, and it sits in our for-interest evidence tier, with creative problem-solving and the Ayurvedic dosha quiz. We treat it as a preference lens for how you like to take in and share information, never as a predictor of how well you learn. The validated core of the assessment is the Big Five and the two reasoning tests. For how we sort tools by evidence, read are personality tests scientific?. For another for-interest test, see what a creative problem-solving test can tell you, and for keeping any result in proportion, how to read your results without fooling yourself.

See the full picture

A learning preference is a small piece of how you operate. Our assessment runs all eight tests in one sitting, takes about an hour, and compiles them into one report built around a goal. Founder OS is live today at $9.