Training Myths and Facts - Learning Styles

(Attribution: Wikipedia Commons)

I recently gave a train-the-trainer course to a group of subject matter experts (SME). Things were going well until I brought up a section on "learning styles." Learning styles are the classic trio of ways people like to learn: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. According to learning style theory, you need to determine how each student prefers to learn and cater your lesson to that learning.

For example, visual learners like diagrams, pictures, and charts to help them understand concepts. Auditory learners prefer listening to explanations while kinesthetic listeners need to move around to learn. The students were familiar with the concept of learning styles and several told me of their preferred learning style. The students talked about how other trainers were good at accommodating the different learning styles. This is when I dropped the "truth bomb."

Despite years of research, there is no evidence for learning styles. This short video gives the arguments against learning styles:

So, why do many trainers and educators continue to believe in learning styles? According to Daniel T. Willingham, there are three reasons why the learning styles belief persists:

"First, I think by this point it’s achieved the status of one of those ideas that “They” have figured out. People believe it for the same reason I believe atomic theory. I’ve never seen the scientific papers supporting it (and wouldn’t understand them if I had), but everyone believes the theory and my teachers taught it to me, so why would I doubt that it’s right?

Second, I think learning styles theory is widely accepted because the idea is so appealing. It would be so nice if it were true. It predicts that a struggling student would find much of school work easier if we made a relatively minor change to lesson plans—make sure the auditory learners are listening, the visual learners are watching, and so on.

Third, something quite close to the theory is not only right, it’s obvious. The style distinctions (visual versus auditory; verbal versus visual) often correspond to real differences in ability. Some people are better with words, some with space, and so on. The (incorrect) twist that learning styles theory adds is to suggest that everyone can reach the same cognitive goal via these different abilities; that if I’m good with space but bad with words (or better, if I prefer space to words), you can rearrange a verbal task so that it plays to my spatial strength."

What other training and learning myths have you encountered in your work as a learning and development professional?