When our daughter was three months old, my wife and I were convinced she had colic. She was writhing, coughing and crying uncontrollably. So we checked her temperature, gave her some Calpol and took her to the GP.

Imagine our surprise when the doctor informed us that our baby didn’t have colic because colic doesn’t exist. According to the academic literature, “colic” is merely an outdated term used for many varied symptoms.

Armed with this new knowledge, what did my wife and I do the next time our daughter started writhing, coughing and crying uncontrollably? Well, we checked her temperature, gave her some Calpol and took her to the GP.

This illustrates the importance of differentiating between academic and practical concerns.

In medical research, some practitioners have built their careers on proving that colic is a myth.

Unfortunately, beyond the walls of academia, this means little, as it has no demonstrable impact on the behaviours parents undertake when confronted with a sick child.

And it’s not just in medicine that this can happen. Consider the controversial topic of learning styles - the theory that individuals are better suited to a particular mode of learning, such as kinaesthetic or auditory.

Learning styles: an academic concern

At some point over the past two decades, you’ve no doubt heard an academic proclaim that learning styles don’t exist; that they’re an outdated myth we must eradicate.

But is this true?

If, by “learning styles”, we mean differential processing of varied stimuli, then they absolutely exist. There are reams of studies demonstrating that the brains of different individuals assign different weights to each sensory modality, with some elevating the processing of, say, visual above auditory stimuli.

If, by “learning styles”, we mean differential performance across varied cognitive domains, then, again, they exist. The entire field of intelligence testing is built around the idea that individuals demonstrate different ability profiles across verbal, numerical, spatial and perceptual domains.

And if, by “learning styles”, we mean differential preference for varied pedagogical techniques or artefacts, they exist. Given the choice, individuals will gravitate towards different modalities of obtaining and interacting with novel information.

Read more:

• Howard Gardner: Multiple intelligences, learning styles and me
• Revealed: Why the DfE spread the learning styles ‘myth’
• The learning styles debate is reignited

So, wait a second. If learning styles can be said to exist at the neurological, psychological and sociological levels, then by what evidence are so many academics arguing that they aren’t real?

The evidence they use concerns what is known as “the matching hypothesis”. This states that when instructional methods are aligned with an individual’s specific pedagogical preferences, learning should improve.

Unfortunately, several studies (far fewer than you’d think) have directly tested this hypothesis and found it wanting. It appears that everybody learns best when instructional methods are aligned with the content being taught rather than the preferences of the individual.

Although debunking the matching hypothesis is interesting and certainly important, the astute reader will recognise that this says nothing about the reality of learning styles.

Think about it like this: imagine I developed a new set of drugs to treat cancer, and each drug was specifically tailored to each patient’s unique blood type. Now, imagine research was conducted showing that, in every instance, traditional chemotherapy was more effective than my designer drug.

From this data, would it make sense to argue that blood types don’t exist? Of course not. The only thing we could reasonably say is that my treatment is less effective than more traditional therapies.

So, when academics say “learning styles don’t exist”, what they’re really saying is “aligning pedagogy with a student’s preferences is less effective for learning than aligning pedagogy with universal patterns of human learning”. It’s a subtle difference, but important.

Or is it?

This still leaves open the question: does any of this have practical value? Does belief in the matching hypothesis (like my belief in colic) impact behaviour in any way?

Learning styles: a practical irrelevance

Over the past 15 years, dozens of surveys have been conducted worldwide asking teachers if they believe that “individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style”. In that time, an estimated 89 per cent of teachers have answered “yes”.

To be fair, that’s an incredible finding. It’s nothing short of surprising that nearly 9 out of 10 teachers worldwide accept a hypothesis that research appears to discount.

But here’s the twist: this is the data that academics use to argue that learning styles are actively harming education, that teachers are embracing ineffective pedagogical practices and that students are needlessly suffering in classrooms every day.

That sure is a lot to glean from a simple survey of beliefs.

Imagine if I surveyed a thousand plumbers and it came back that 89 per cent of them believed in unicorns. That would certainly be interesting, but imagine if I then used this statistic to argue that belief in unicorns leads plumbers to adopt ineffective practices, thereby harming their ability to de-clog drains.

Hopefully you recognise that this is a non-sequitur: if I truly wanted to argue that unicorn belief influences plumber behaviour, I’d have to follow dozens of plumbers to work, track any differences in their techniques, then correlate these differences with the original survey data.

Guess how many people have explicitly researched the link between unicorns and plumber behaviour? Zero.

And guess how many people have explicitly researched the link between belief in learning styles and pedagogical practices? Again, zero.

Despite anecdotal reports of teachers being asked to create worksheets or tailor lessons to different learning styles, we have no scientific evidence illustrating the extent to which this happened, the extent to which teachers have complied, or what impact any of this has had on learning outcomes.

That’s right: there is not a shred of published data showing that belief in the matching hypothesis in any way impacts how teachers teach. This is not to say that a link doesn’t exist; it’s only to say that nobody has ever explicitly looked for the link - it’s merely been assumed and never questioned.

Interestingly, this complete lack of data has not stopped academics from fantasising about negative scenarios.

Scenario 1: Belief in the matching hypothesis leads teachers to deconstruct their pedagogy and only offer students information in their preferred style.

Although this scenario is undoubtedly present in many adaptive edtech products, and although some school leaders may have pushed for it in the past, think of how improbable it would be in a traditional classroom on a long-term, day-to-day basis.

Teaching is easily one of the most time-poor professions in the world. Teachers, who frequently require the weekend to complete their basic duties, don’t have the time to develop four different ways to teach each lesson. And even if they did, how would that play out in a classroom?

Imagine a teacher has invented four discrete ways to teach action verbs: reading, hearing, acting out and singing. Now imagine that teacher is standing in front of 30 students. Do you think she’s going to send the kids off into four different corners of the room, block each corner off and ensure each student only experiences one version of the lesson? Or do you think she’s going to teach as usual, allowing all students to read, say, act out and sing each verb?

In addition, whereas there is zero evidence that this type of pedagogical adaptation is occurring, there is circumstantial evidence that it wouldn’t matter even if it was. In a survey of highly effective teachers (those who had won teaching awards based on their pedagogical efficacy), 84 per cent believed in the matching hypothesis: a number not statistically different from the 89 per cent of non-award-winning teachers. If we accept that all teachers who accept the matching hypothesis teach only according to each student’s learning preference, we must also accept that some teachers appear to be able to do this in a highly effective manner.

Scenario 2: Belief in the matching hypothesis leads students to pigeonhole their efforts and only embrace those study strategies that align with their reported style.

Fortunately, this doesn’t appear to be the case. In the only study conducted to date to explicitly explore the link between students’ learning styles and reported study practices, researchers found no correlation between the two. Regardless of the learning style students are told they have, each employs a variety of study methods that don’t fit any single style. In addition, researchers also found that reported learning styles do not correlate with preferred teaching methods, with nearly all students preferring movies and hands-on activities over lengthy reading or writing assignments.

To make matters worse, any argument concerned with pigeonholing students comes up against the modern wellbeing movement in education. Right now, schools around the world are embracing strengths-based curricula, whereby students fill out a personality questionnaire, are informed of their unique strengths and are urged to lean on those to support their learning. Strengths-based and other personality indices (entrepreneurial, collaborative, career and so on) serve to pigeonhole students in the same manner as learning-styles questionnaires. And if it’s bad for one, surely it’s bad for all.

Scenario 3: Belief in the matching hypothesis leads teachers to select less effective pedagogies over strategies long shown to be highly effective by research, such as retrieval practice, distributed practice and summarisation.

Keeping in mind that there is zero evidence (beyond, perhaps, the anecdotal) that this is occurring, this scenario misses one key fact: the matching hypothesis and research-based strategies are not mutually exclusive. It is wholly possible for a teacher to adapt pedagogy to a student’s learning style (you are only allowed to read) while embracing retrieval practice (what did you read yesterday?), distributed practice (I’d like you to re-read the same passage tomorrow night) and summarisation (what were the key things you read?).

Are learning styles ‘toxic’?

In a wonderful example of fortuitous timing, several months ago, a group of researchers published a new study that some academics are touting as the final nail in the learning styles coffin. So, what did these researchers do? Did they disprove cognitive processing differences? Did they directly correlate teacher practice with beliefs?

No. They showed a group of 94 teachers from the US two stick figures, one with an eyeball icon underneath (signifying “visual learner”), the other with a hand icon underneath (signifying “kinaesthetic learner”).

They then asked “Which student is smarter?” and “Which student is sportier?”. Participating teachers were not allowed to answer “I don’t know”, or “I need more info,” or “Both will be equal” - they were forced to pick one. With regards to “smarter”, 76 per cent selected the stick figure with the eyeball. With regards to “sportier”, 95 per cent selected the stick figure with the hand.

Finally, teachers were asked to name three academic subjects they thought each stick figure would excel in. For the visual learner, they selected maths, history, English, and art; while for the kinaesthetic learner, they selected science, art, PE, and maths.

That’s it. That was the experiment.

From this, the researchers concluded that perceived learning styles influence teachers’ thinking about students’ academic potential and abilities.

Don’t misunderstand: I am not knocking these researchers, or their research, in any way - but I will say that’s a bold conclusion to draw from this data.

Let me offer a different interpretation: priming.

Priming is a well-established psychological phenomenon whereby exposure to particular stimuli subconsciously influences how we interpret later stimuli. As an example:

TOWEL / SHAMPOO / SHOWER / S _ _ P

My guess is that more than 95 per cent of you read the final word as “soap”, even though you all could have just as easily read “ship”, “slap”, “soup”, “stop”, or any other number of words. Notice that by simply priming you with words that have clear connotations, I was able to predictably guide your performance without truly tapping into or impacting your deeper beliefs about the world.

Seeing as the eye has long been used to symbolise knowledge and wisdom (the eye of providence; Sherlock Holmes’ eye in the magnifying glass; the large eyes of an owl), it’s predictable that people looking at an eyeball and presented with the word “smart” would link these two together. Similarly, seeing as the top three sports in the United States (football, basketball and baseball) are characterised by individuals using their limbs to skillfully manipulate a ball, it’s equally predictable that people looking at a hand, and presented with the word “sporty”, would link these two together.

If you think my interpretation of priming is silly, just remember: it’s on equal footing with the interpretation that participating teachers were basing their choices on learning styles. Unfortunately, neither can be proven or disproven using the data generated in this research.

Additionally, whereas it’s true that teachers selected different academic subjects they’d expect each student to excel in, the significance of this is unclear. Of all the academic subjects taught in school, it’s curious that “art” and “maths” were selected for both students. Furthermore, few teachers agreed on the remaining four subjects (15 per cent picked history, 9 per cent English, 19 per cent science and 12 per cent PE).

Seeing as fewer than one in seven teachers agreed on how visual and kinaesthetic learners would differ academically, and that these predicted differences were offset by an equal number of similarities, it’s anyone’s guess what this all means. Probably, nothing much at all.

Finally, in the interest of being thorough, let’s pretend for a moment that the authors’ interpretation of this data is accurate. This still leaves us with one big problem: we don’t teach stick figures, we teach human beings. Even if knowledge of learning preferences does drive judgement, it’s unclear how much weight this judgement would hold when confronted with the wealth of additional information teachers have about students (name, sex, hair style, speech patterns, friendship circles, basic hobbies, parental involvement, prior academic performance and so on).

If you were told that the school’s star athlete was a visual learner and the quiz champion was a kinaesthetic learner, do you still think these learning styles would significantly influence which student you believe to be sporty and which to be smart?

How do we move the debate forward?

I have been in academia for a while, and if you’ve made it this far into the piece, you’ve probably guessed that I love a good academic debate. However, I was a teacher long before I was a researcher.

As such, I consider it imperative to maintain a steadfast focus on practical relevance.

The debate over learning styles is certainly an interesting academic consideration. Unfortunately, there is zero scientific evidence that this has any practical bearing on educational practice.

In the end, the only thing researchers can reasonably say is that when pedagogy matches the content (rather than individual learning preferences), then everyone will learn better. This means teaching the tango by dancing, teaching art history by examining old paintings and teaching music theory by listening to a lot of music.

However, from this, it does not follow that learning styles are a myth or that belief in the matching hypothesis negatively impacts teacher practice. These latter two arguments require a specific type of data to evaluate - data that simply does not exist at the moment.

One final thought: why does belief in the matching hypothesis persist despite the best efforts of researchers to dispel it?

My best guess is that it’s our fault.

When a mantra is divisive (“learning styles don’t exist”), it forces people to take sides. And lest you’ve not been paying attention to western politics over the past decade, when people are forced to take sides, they often double down on the thing they currently believe and become that much more resistant to opposing views.

However, when a mantra is left open (“learning styles don’t appear to matter”), it invites meaningful discussion. When someone asks why learning styles don’t appear to matter, this opens the door for us to have a useful conversation about the matching hypothesis and its impact on student learning.

Perhaps it’s time to change our mantra.

Jared Cooney Horvath is a neuroscientist, educator and author

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