Why you should use learning styles in your training

There is a lot of debate amongst academics about Learning Styles and the fake studies that promoted using them in teaching several decades ago.

Wait. Did I write “fake studies” out loud?

Yep. Sure did.

So why the title, “Why you SHOULD use learning styles in your training?”

Gotcha, that’s why. Oh… and because I believe it.

Learning styles exist. They may not exist in the neat simple categories we would like them to, and they certainly don’t exist as a physiological highway toward improved learning - or a hard-to-detect deer trail, depending on whether you choose the correct one or not - but they do exist. We all learn stylistically. We should teach stylistically. We should stretch students and teachers alike and, whenever possible, provide more than one style to learn something. I might even go as far as to say we should force the so-called auditory learners to learn visually and vice versa.

I don’t believe in Learning Styles in the way they’ve been taught for years. Too many studies have debunked that. This isn’t an academic essay, so don’t look for it here, but see others like Will Thalheimer, Guy Wallace, Matthew Richter, and many others who do a great job of debunking Learning Styles. Do your homework – they’ve made it easy for you.

However, I wonder (and I plead guilty, here) if we do ourselves a disfavor by preaching a "you're an idiot if you still believe in Learning Styles" message instead of helping instructors move to a better understanding of how humans learn. I just watched Kyle Buchanan’s video titled, “Learning Styles Are a Complete Myth." Even with the overstated title, the video is helpful and worth watching. However, I fear that making a dogmatic statement like that, only to come back to a more realistic statement that informs us that, "well, they do exist but they're just preferences and they don't really change outcomes" may unintentionally discredit the premise and confuse the truth. "They don't exist at all" and "They do exist as preferences" are two very different things. One untruth doesn't justify another one. We need to be clearer on what the "myth" part of Learning Styles really is. The myth has nothing to do with the existence of learning options and everything to do with how those alternatives are applied in designing, delivering, and even receiving learning.

So, apply learning styles correctly. Not so that one of the styles will connect with a learner, but so that all of them will.

One last thing. I understand overstating titles to get people’s attention.