Growing up, you may have been told to take some sort of Cosmopolitan-like quiz in school (only this one probably had less sex), where you had to choose from a series of answers and tally up all your A’s, B’s, and C’s at the end, and whichever letter had the most points was your learning style. Viola! Just like that, you had the key to your learning success. You were either a visual learner who learns best through seeing material, an auditory learner who learns best by listening to someone share information, or a kinesthetic learner who learns best by interacting with material. Knowing your learning style would have great implications on your learning for years to come, right?
Wrong! The popular and widely held belief that people have a learning style in which they actually learn better is a neuromyth, or a common misconception about how the brain functions. This neuromyth has been particularly problematic because it has seeped its way into classroom instruction and self-efficacy of learners. While learners definitely benefit from receiving information in multiple modalities, there is no evidence to support this notion that individuals consistently learn better with one style over another.
In a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Educational Psychology, researchers Shaylene Nancekivell, Priti Shah, and Susan Gelman sought to better understand how people interpret and characterize learning styles. In particular, researchers wanted to better understand if people who believed in learning styles held an essentialist view (determined by genetics) or a non essentialist view (determined by environment and experience) or some combination of the two. Basically, the nature versus nurture of learning styles. The first experiment determined that, yes, people either generally hold the belief that an individual’s learning style is largely influenced by genetics (essentialist), or that the individual develops their learning style over time through experiences (nonessentialist).
In the second experiment, researchers wanted to better understand how individuals working in a learning environment (teachers, university instructors, corporate trainers, etc.) perceived learning styles. Would the impact of working in education directly impact an individual’s understanding of learning styles compared to the general population?
This experiment consisted of 337 adults (average age 39), 40% of whom were classified as educators, and all of whom believed in learning styles in order to understand how those beliefs came to be. Participants were surveyed with four separate sets of questions. The first group of questions were essentialist questions to rate individuals on a scale of essentialists to nonessentialist. The second block of questions included a series of “switched-at-birth vignettes” in order to force participants into choosing between genetics or experiences that ultimately determined a fictional person’s learning style. For example. Baby Z’s biological parents have a visual learning style, but baby Z was adopted and the adopted parents have a kinesthetic learning style… now baby Z is 10, what kind of learning style does s/he have? The third series in the experiment tried to better understand participant’s beliefs about how learning styles are manifested into an individual in the first place by asking participants to rate a series of questions on a Lickert Scale from not at all likely to very likely. And the fourth and last part of the experiment looked at participants’ experience with learning styles and collected demographic information.
The results of the second experiment found that participants could be clearly grouped into essentializers or non essentializers based on their responses to block one of the survey questions. Once participants were grouped into essentializers versus nonessentializers, their responses were evaluated by group. The essentializers were more likely to choose the birth parents learning style for baby Z and the nonessentializers chose the adopted parents learning style most frequently in the switched-at-birth vignettes. Block three showed that in general, everyone who believed in learning styles believed that people with different learning styles learn by actually using different parts of the brain. In general, educators were somewhat less likely to believe in learning styles in the first place. However, of the educators who believed in learning styles, the only real difference between them and the general population was that teachers of younger children were more likely to hold an essentialist view (learning style determined by genes) than teachers of young adults.
What does this mean? It means we still have a lot of work to do to dispel the learning style neuromyth, particularly with educators (since their belief directly impacts instruction). This and further research dedicated to understanding underlying beliefs about learning styles can help those working to clarify neuromyths address the misconceptions head-on. Next time you think you just can’t do something… baby, you weren’t born that way!
Tech To You Later!
-Katie