Learning Styles: What the Evidence Says

What are learning styles?

Learning styles are categories meant to describe how a person learns best. You fill in a questionnaire about how you like to take in information, it assigns you a type, and the advice that follows is to study, or be taught, in the way that suits your type. Many different models exist, built on different ideas of what a style is.

The best known is VARK, developed by the New Zealand educator Neil Fleming, which sorts preferences into Visual, Aural, Read/write and Kinesthetic. Older and broader models include David Kolb's, based on his theory of experiential learning, and the Honey and Mumford questionnaire that grew out of it. What they share is the promise that once you know your style, matching your learning to it will help you learn more.

The real claim: the meshing hypothesis

It helps to separate two claims that are often blurred together. The first is that people have preferences: some would rather watch a demonstration, others would rather read the manual. That is true and uncontroversial. The second is that matching instruction to those preferences makes people learn more. Researchers call this second claim the meshing hypothesis, and it is the one that matters, because it is what turns a preference into study advice.

Testing it properly takes a specific kind of study. You sort learners into styles, then teach each group the same material in both formats — say, a diagram and a spoken explanation — and test them all the same way. If the hypothesis is right, the visual learners should do better with the diagram and the auditory learners better with the spoken version. Researchers call that pattern a crossover. Showing that visual learners like diagrams, or that a class taught with diagrams did well, does not test the claim at all.

What the evidence on learning styles says

In 2008 a team of psychologists including Harold Pashler and Robert Bjork published a widely cited review of the learning styles literature. They found that very few studies had used a design capable of testing the meshing hypothesis, and that those which had mostly did not find the crossover pattern. Several found results that contradicted it. Their conclusion was that the evidence did not justify building teaching around learning styles assessments, and later reviews and experiments have broadly agreed.

A related finding is telling. When researchers compare what learners believe with what they actually remember, a preferred format can feel more effective without producing better results. That fits a wider pattern in learning research: how easy something feels while you study is a poor guide to how well you will remember it.

None of this means everyone learns the same way. People differ a great deal in what they already know, how interested they are and how much practice they have had. Those differences matter for learning. A style label from a questionnaire, on the evidence so far, does not add much to them.

Why the learning styles idea is so popular

Studies of so-called neuromyths, popular beliefs about the brain that research does not support, have found belief in learning styles to be common among teachers in several countries. That is not because teachers are careless. The idea has several things going for it:

• It matches experience. Everyone has preferences, so a theory built on them feels obviously true.
• It is respectful. Saying that every student learns differently sounds kinder than saying the same methods work for most people.
• It feels like self-knowledge. A questionnaire result reads like a personal insight, and people tend to accept descriptions of themselves that seem specific.
• It contains a kernel of truth. Some content really does suit some formats, and mixing formats often helps — just not for the reason the theory gives.
• Preferred formats feel easier, and easy feels like learning, so experience seems to confirm the label.

What does work: match the format to the material

The useful version of the idea is about content, not people. Some material is best learned in a particular form, whoever is learning it. The layout of the heart is easier to grasp from a diagram than from a paragraph. The pronunciation of a French vowel has to be heard. A tennis serve has to be practiced. A legal argument has to be read and followed step by step. Choosing the format that fits the subject helps every learner.

Combining formats helps too. Allan Paivio's dual coding theory holds that words and images are processed in partly separate ways, so material presented in both has two routes back into memory. In practice, a clear diagram with a short explanation tends to beat either one alone — for visual learners and auditory learners alike. Sketching your own diagram of a process you read about, or a mind map of a chapter, puts this to work.

The differences between learners that clearly matter are prior knowledge and practice. A beginner needs worked examples and simple explanations; someone further along benefits more from problems to solve. That is the kind of personalized learning worth looking for.

What to do instead of studying to your learning style

If you have been organizing your study around a style label, you can replace it with habits that have much stronger evidence behind them. They work for every type a questionnaire could give you.

1. 1Choose the format by the content: diagrams for structures and processes, listening for languages and music, practice for skills, careful reading for arguments.
2. 2Pair words with pictures. When you read, sketch the idea; when you look at a diagram, explain it in a sentence.
3. 3Test yourself instead of rereading. Recalling an answer from memory strengthens it more than looking at it again.
4. 4Space your reviews out over days and weeks rather than cramming them into one session.
5. 5Mix problem types during practice rather than doing one type in a block, so you learn to spot which method each problem needs.
6. 6Explain ideas aloud in your own words, to a person or to yourself, and notice where the explanation breaks down.
7. 7Use your preferences for motivation, not as limits. If you enjoy listening, use audio for review — but do not skip the reading the subject needs.

If you were told you are a visual or kinesthetic learner

Many students were given a style label at school, and it can quietly shape what they avoid. Someone told they are a kinesthetic learner may decide long reading is not for them; someone labeled visual may skip lectures that do not have slides. The risk of the label is less that it is wrong and more that it narrows what you try. Reading stamina, listening and note-taking are skills, and they improve with practice whatever your preferences.

If reading or listening is consistently much harder for you than for others, that is worth raising with a teacher or your school's student support service. A specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia is a different thing from a learning style, and it can be assessed and supported. For everyone else, the most reliable gains come from the methods above — active recall and spaced repetition among them.