I’m Not a Visual Learner, and Neither Are You
One of the most persistent myths in education just won’t die.
The idea that you are either a visual learner, an auditory learner, or a kinesthetic learner is often repeated, appeals to our pattern-finding instincts, and is demonstrably false. In fact, it’s described in an article published in the Journal of Educational Psychology by Nancekivell (2020) as “one of the most pervasive myths in all of cognition.”
As an educator with over 25 years of experience, I have had the pleasure of co-teaching and observing in a wide range of classrooms from diverse populations. I can say without hesitation that “Learning Styles” are the most common falsehood I’ve seen taught over the years. I’ve seen it taught to middle school students, high school students, and university students. I’ve seen it spoken about in professional development sessions for teachers. As a former classroom teacher, I was told to differentiate my lessons according to learning modality. As an education professor at a graduate school, I found references to learning styles in teacher preparation materials.
So, what does it mean to say it’s not a real thing? If you take people and put them into groups by learning style and provide them with instruction or tasks in their preferred modality, you see no improvements in their performance compared to a control group where learning modalities were assigned randomly (Pashler et al., 2009).
It’s important to note that many people do have very real preferences surrounding how they like to receive information, but they do not perform better in their preferred modality (Rogowsky, 2015; Krätzig, 2006). In fact, there are some findings suggesting people might learn better when receiving instruction in a modality they do not prefer (Rogowsky, 2020)!
It’s so pervasive that I have found I must be sensitive and thoughtful about how I broach this topic with teachers. When running workshops or coaching teachers, you’d be surprised how often teachers get angry or dismissive of me if I tell them about the lack of research supporting the idea, and the wealth of research refuting it.
As far as I can tell, for many people, discovering that learning styles, as most people understand them, are not real is an attack on their identity. When someone has walked around saying things like, “I’m a visual learner,” for the majority of their life, you’re not just telling them that learning styles aren’t real; you’re telling them that a part of their identity isn’t real. You are taking away one of the tools they have used to help them understand and navigate the chaotic world we inhabit. It’s an ineffective tool, but they don’t realize that yet. In the moment, even as you help them, you’re ruining something they thought they had figured out about themselves. You’re telling them that, on some level, they don’t understand themselves.
A lot of people will just flat-out reject me when I try to tell them about the large body of research around these ideas. It’s part of why this article contains more references to peer reviewed research than I might normally include.
I can relate to those who respond emotionally. I went around for years telling people I was a visual learner. I would solve a geometric problem faster than my peers... and obviously that was why. I preferred visual representations of things. I liked visual problems more than problems represented as a block of text. I have always been a painfully slow reader.
I now know that is at least partially because I’m dyslexic, something I didn’t discover until late in life. I first suspected it while learning about dyslexia to teach a special education class at the graduate school where I was a visiting professor. It turns out that much of what I had interpreted as being a “visual learner” was actually difficulty processing text. As a painfully slow reader, it would take me ages to read a book or complete a reading comprehension passage on a standardized test. Earning my Ph.D. involved so much reading that, for someone like me, it was borderline masochistic.
The one bit of advice I got after discovering I was dyslexic near the end of my 30s was to try audiobooks. I can now listen to multiple books in a week if I’m not working. I like to listen to nonfiction at 2x speed. If my wife overhears me, she says it gives her anxiety. I like to joke that I’m just making up for a lifetime’s worth of casual nonfiction backlog. Did I never try it before because I had identified as a visual learner? Had I discovered this as a young man, I probably would have walked around telling everyone I was an auditory learner. Would it have made a difference? It’s my sincere hope that your students and your children never have to wonder.
Belief in learning styles can be detrimental. Some teacher preparation programs propagate the myth, and there exist countless books, workshops, and tutoring centers profiting from propagating these falsehoods. Parents, schools, and educational institutions waste time and money on an approach that has consistently failed to produce compelling results or evidence. Time and money that could be used on effective strategies or relevant content.
Every year, students and teachers are being taught to view their learning through the unhelpful lens of learning styles. Most public-school educators get master’s degrees in education or have to complete a teacher preparation program. None of these educators should leave their programs believing this falsehood. Help spread the word. Share this article. Make sure your community isn’t part of the problem. We can do this.
References
Krätzig, G. P., & Arbuthnott, K. D. (2006). Perceptual learning style and learning proficiency: A test of the hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98(1), 238–246. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-02666-020
Nancekivell, S. E., Shah, P., & Gelman, S. A. (2020). Maybe they’re born with it, or maybe it’s experience: Understanding of the learning style myth. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(2), 221–235. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000366
Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2009). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x
Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M., & Tallal, P. (2015). Matching learning style to instructional method: Effects on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(1), 64–78. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-31081-001 (or DOI: 10.1037/a0037478)
Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M., & Tallal, P. (2020). Providing Instruction Based on Students’ Learning Style Preferences Does Not Improve Learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00164