Several years ago, I worked on a project with youth from a state’s foster care agency. This project required teaching youth about their learning styles. My (then) boss talked about the five learning styles, specifically visual, aural, verbal, mathematical, and tactile. We all took a short quiz and rated our learning styles. I found out I scored high in all five, which I attributed to having to adapt to different styles based upon my years of formal education.
Christian Jarrett posted about a recent study conducted using the VARK learning styles tool. The study, authored by Polly R. Husmann and Valerie Dean O’Loughlin, found students who were provided learning matching their preferred learning style did not learn any better. While interesting, a few points to make:
- The study focused on a sample of college students in an anatomy course. This would indicate these students were probably pre-med or similar academic track.
- From the VARK site, a good portion of the aggregated participant samples are those identified as “university”, “two-year college”, or “high school”. This is a younger group of participants, which may support my experience (e.g., finding out I was not polarized on one learning style or the other) may be more common than is reported.
The Jarrett post and Husmann/O’Loughlin article tend to negatively focus on learning styles as a whole. I would like to argue that there is enough research to support there is something to learning styles. I believe, however, as an individual gets older and more experienced, the individual adapts to other styles and, in turn, loses a real preference for a specific style vs. another.
That would be an interesting study…