X Close

Digital Education team blog

Home

Ideas and reflections from UCL's Digital Education team

Menu

Nature: Learning styles are rubbish and bad science. Stop it.

By Matt Jenner, on 16 December 2015

Pulped books – only those pimping VAK though!

Finally – learning styles, the notion that one person learns better from visual materials and another from auditory responses, is rubbished by Nature. So can we finally stop using these? Please. I’m not going to write much except that it’s well featured in an article in Nature called ‘The science myths that will not die’ and is followed with ‘False beliefs and wishful thinking about the human experience are common. They are hurting people — and holding back science.’

Myth 4: Individuals learn best when taught in their preferred learning style

“Learning styles has got it all going for it: a seed of fact, emotional biases and wishful thinking,” says Howard-Jones. Yet just like sugar, pornography and television, “what you prefer is not always good for you or right for you,” says Paul Kirschner, an educational psychologist at the Open University of the Netherlands.

Source – The science myths that will not die

If that’s not enough, then I guess I protest best using visual materials and SHOUTING. *sigh*, on with the show… 🙂