Why Won't the Myth of Learning Styles Die?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why the debunked theory of learning styles persists in education despite overwhelming evidence against it.
Key Takeaways
- The evidence is clear - Cognitive psychologists have repeatedly shown that learning styles don't exist in the way educators believe
- It persists because it feels true - The intuitive appeal of 'everyone learns differently' is emotionally satisfying even when scientifically wrong
- It wastes time and resources - Designing instruction around supposed learning styles takes time away from approaches that actually work
Transcript
Learning styles are a myth, but why does that myth refuse to die?
I didn't think it was even worth saying anymore that learning styles are a myth because I thought everybody knew that.
But every time I say it, somebody says, no, learning styles are real.
I know my learning style and it works better for me.
to learn in my preferred learning style and we've known for decades now that that's not true people do not learn better in their preferred learning style learning style needs to be matched to the material right like if you are solving math problems obviously it's going to be easier to solve math problems on paper or on a board than you know verbally or in your head and somebody said to me on twitter the other day that, well, I do a lot better with math problems in writing than verbally.
And my response to that was, everybody does.
That's true for everybody.
That is just a property of math.
You probably do better with music, hearing the music, rather than just seeing it written out on paper too.
Like it's a property of the material, not a property the person and I think a lot of the talk about neurodiversity in recent years has made people think that individual people learn in different ways and and people like to say well all children learn in different ways and if you look into any of the disciplines that study human learning cognitive psychology especially you will find that that is not one of their findings it is not a finding of cognitive psychology that all people learn in Do all people breathe differently?
Well, no, not really.
Everybody's lungs work kind of the same way.
And that doesn't mean everybody has the same lung capacity.
It doesn't mean everybody has the same respiration rate.
It doesn't mean everybody has the same resting heart rate.
It doesn't mean that there aren't things that can go wrong with breathing.
But fundamentally, everybody breathes the same way.
And that's true for learning as well.
Everybody's brain works essentially the same way and there are things that can go wrong.
But what there are not is differences in how people learn that have instructional implications from kid to kid where I need to teach this kid one way and this kid another way because their brain is different.
That is simply not a thing and yet this neuro myth, this myth of learning styles will not die.
Let me know what you think.
Are you hearing persistence in this belief about learning styles?
Let me know.