The Idea Teachers Won't Let Go Of

Ask a teacher whether their pupils are visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learners and roughly nine out of ten will say yes, they can tell, and they tailor their lessons accordingly. Ask the researchers who have spent twenty years testing the idea and the answer is rather different.

The idea that children have a learning style - a preferred mode of taking in information that, when matched, helps them learn better - is one of the most widely believed claims in education. It is also one of the most thoroughly disproven.

Where the idea came from

The learning styles concept took off in the 1970s and 1980s. Different researchers proposed different versions. Some said three styles: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic. Others said seven. By one count, more than seventy distinct learning styles models have been published.

What they all share is the same basic claim: people learn best when teaching is delivered in their preferred style. Tell a "visual learner" something with pictures and they will absorb more than if you just speak to them. Show a "kinaesthetic learner" by doing, not telling.

It is an appealing idea. It says every child can succeed if you find the right key. It also feels true, because we all have things we feel better at and prefer.

What the evidence actually says

In 2009, four psychologists published a paper in Psychological Science in the Public Interest that has since become the standard reference. They reviewed every study they could find that properly tested the learning styles claim. A proper test means matching some children to their style and mismatching others, then seeing who learns more.

They found almost nothing. The studies that had been done either showed no effect, or were so badly designed they could not be trusted. Studies that did report a benefit tended to come from researchers with a financial interest in promoting the model. Independent, well-designed studies found that children learn the same amount regardless of whether the teaching matched their supposed style.

A 2017 review in Frontiers in Psychology reached the same conclusion. In the same year, more than thirty British academics signed an open letter in The Guardian asking universities and schools to stop using the model. The Education Endowment Foundation, which advises English schools on what works, rates teaching to learning styles as having very low or no impact on results.

Why teachers still believe in it

A 2020 survey of UK teachers found that 89 per cent agreed with the statement that individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style. A 2012 study of teachers in the UK and the Netherlands found nine in ten thought the same. Universities still hand out learning styles questionnaires to undergraduates. Some teacher training programmes still teach the model as fact.

Part of this is intuitive. Children do say things like "I'm a visual person" or "I learn better by doing". That sounds like a learning style. But what it usually means is that the child has a preference, not that they actually learn more when taught that way. People often prefer the method that feels easier in the moment, even when a slightly harder method produces more lasting learning.

Part of it is that the idea sits well with how we want education to feel. It says no child is dim, just being taught in the wrong way. That is hopeful, even if the evidence does not back it up.

What actually helps children learn

The same researchers who picked apart learning styles have spent decades studying what does work. The findings are less catchy but more reliable.

Children learn best when they have to retrieve information rather than re-read it. Asking your child to tell you what they remember about a topic, with the book closed, produces stronger memory than reading the chapter again. This effect is strong and shows up across ages.

Spacing matters too. Coming back to a topic over weeks helps far more than cramming it into one evening. The brain seems to need the small forgetting between sessions to lock things in.

The content of teaching matters far more than the style. Children reading about volcanoes need to know words like crater and magma. You can teach those words with a diagram, with a clear verbal explanation, by building a clay model, or simply by hearing them used in a story. What does not help is being told they are a particular type of learner and given less of one mode than another. If anything, that makes learning worse, because children get less practice with the modes they find harder.

The cost of the myth

If learning styles were harmless, it would matter less that they are wrong. But they carry a cost. Children who are told they are visual learners can come to believe they cannot learn from listening. Children who are told they are kinaesthetic can come to dread sitting still with a book. Teachers spend time creating multiple versions of materials when they could be spending that time on what the evidence says works.

There is also something quieter at stake. A child who decides early that they are "not a reader" or "not a maths person" rarely changes their mind. The labels we give children stick. A learning style label may sound supportive, but it is still a fixed identity wrapped around a still-developing brain.

The best thing a parent can do is probably the least exciting. Read with your child. Talk through what they are learning. Get them to explain things back. Practise things at intervals, not in one sitting. None of it sorts them into a type.