Learning Styles are Bunk
They are not only pop-science, but potentially limiting as well
A common and recurring idea that I hear is that we have distinct learning styles and that we learn best when the teaching is adjusted to that learning style.
I am here to burst that bubble. Learning styles are not backed by evidence and are often detrimental to the learning process.
My first serious rub with learning styles happened when I was leading a team in Bosnia. Part of my mandate as a leader included helping all team members achieve language proficiency in Serbo-Croatian. We hired a local teacher and ran a small language school. Language learning is mostly a function of speaking. You can study all you want but if you don't speak the language, you will not learn it.
Our course included memorizing short dialogues and then practicing in the community. Using the new words in context is key. Among language learning experts, this is not controversial.
Soon after we started, I began to hear excuses from various people about why they were not progressing. Chief among them was, "I don't learn this way." The "oral learners" wanted more time to simply listen to the words. The "visual learners" demanded more grammar diagramming. The "kinesthetic learners" wanted to copy the text over and over. The "verbal processors," well, they loved it. They were at the head of the class in just a few weeks.
If you are going to learn a language, you must speak it. It is that simple. Your "learning style" does not matter. My experience has been that the learning style paradigm is most often used to avoid learning. “I don’t learn like that,” is probably true, not because a person cannot “learn like that,” but because they have convinced themselves that they cannot.
Learning styles are, in fact, fake science.
I could provide a list of articles on the research, but a quick Internet search is sufficient. There is simply no significant research that validates the learning styles theory. It is a popular myth that education researchers have been trying to stamp out. Unfortunately, it has been institutionalized in our schools. Over 50% of states test teachers on learning style dogma (reference is here). Not only are learning styles pop-science, but they are also harmful. They place blinders on us and direct us away from valid methods of learning.
The way we learn something is dependent more on what we are learning. Language learning is a good example of this. To speak a new language requires you to… speak a new language. No learning style will change this fact. This same principle applies to other pursuits.
Engaging all learning styles offers the best chance of success. Listening, seeing, speaking, writing and reading are all helpful. For language learning, listen and mimic recorded speech. Write it down using the phonetic library and then again using the language's characters. Speak it out loud, and then go into the community, practicing it with others. Diagram it. Learning to play guitar? Memorize chords, and scales and then drill them over and over, letting muscle memory form. Listen to good guitar players. Watch the fretboard as somebody plays. Do you want to learn pickleball? Play it, do drills, watch matches and take lessons. Do it all.
Curiosity and an open learning posture are better starting points than beginning with boundaries about how you learn. The topic of study may be only part of the learning process. The means are also a part of the learning experience.
Don't let learning styles limit what you do.