Not My Style
Image by Vladan Rajkovic from Pixabay
When I was in graduate school in the 1970’s we were given an old rusty 1960’s vintage VW bus. Not the modern (artfully distorted) version above. Think Hippie icon with a 36 hp engine (below). Simply put, it wasn’t my style. I never had a hippie orientation, but my family with two kids needed transportation. I had to be a pragmatist and take what was available.
Image by Jeriann Keeling from Pixabay (ours wasn’t this bad).
The same pragmatic realism needs to inform my approach to learning. I don’t always have the option of using my preferred approach to a learning task. Recently my wife and I were in Germany at a kiosk to buy bus and subway tickets. Unfortunately, everything was in German and my last formal instruction in German was nearly 60 years ago. I had hoped to buy the tickets from a human who spoke English (as many in Germany do). Alas, the kiosk machine had no sympathy for my illiteracy! I went around and around tapping my selections, swiping my credit card and . . . no tickets. I decided it might help if I looked up a few German words. It turns out I had been ever so close to success. The most prominent button on the screen was labeled aufheben and I had been touching it following my selections. Aufheben means to cancel. I needed to use the less prominent button labeled bezahlen: to pay! It’s all so obvious now!
What follows is an approximate transcript of the podcast episode, Not My Style.
Intro: On today’s podcast we’re going to consider a topic in learning which 85% of the professional educational establishment believes, but research demonstrates unequivocally is a myth. Probably most of my audience has uncritically accepted this myth as well. This myth isn’t harmless; it warps how we approach the process of learning, and it is the enemy of deep and durable learning. Stay tuned as we address the fable of learning styles.
Let’s start our evaluation of the concept of learning styles by defining what they are supposed to be. Evan Straub of the University of Michigan defines a learning style as
a stable, consistent method that individuals [use to] take in, organize, process, and remember information.
Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay
You’ve probably heard someone label themselves a visual learner. This is usually a self-assessment, and it means at least that the person believes they learn best if instruction is highly visual. They prefer concrete illustrations to written descriptions or purely vocal instruction. Note that they prefer visualization, not that they absolutely require it in order to learn. There is no doubt that we all have such preferences but learning style advocates contend that these preferences constitute legitimate expectations for good instructional design. They say that students learn better when their learning preferences are met. Shallow student learning or struggles in learning are not the student’s fault, but the teacher’s according to this view. Learning preferences become learning modalities that must be honored, or some students will be disadvantaged.
Learning preferences become learning modalities that must be honored
Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada posted in 2008 a pdf of a workshop on how to determine and leverage your learning style. It sounds suspiciously like other quests for self-knowledge like spiritual gifting or personality types like Meyers Briggs categories. Here’s what they say:
There are 4 predominant learning styles: Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, and Kinaesthetic. While most of us may have some general idea about how we learn best, often it comes as a surprise when we discover what our predominant learning style is.
The implication is that better learning occurs when we have better self-awareness of how we as individuals learn. This is something you need to know about yourself or your learning will be compromised they say.
The idea of a preferred learning style sounds plausible on the face of it. We know that learners are not all the same. The problem is partly with labeling this a “learning” style. More accurately these represent preferred sensory channels for conveying information or ideas. They are upstream of the actual learning process. The process of learning is fundamentally the same in everyone. Sensory channels deliver their contents to working memory where it interacts with ideas retrieved from long-term memory. Ideas are concepts and their connections to other concepts. Sensory information may modify concepts or their connections.
Image by Markus Spiske from Pixabay
We don’t record the input of sensory channels. Learning is not a matter of mere retrieval of previous recordings. Such recordings don’t exist! This is where learning styles erroneously play right into another myth—the myth that learning is mere recall. Learning is encoding perceived patterns in the form of concept and their connections. Concepts are not static but undergo regular re-evaluation and remodeling. Learning is grappling with ideas and their meaning and import until I understand and can make appropriate application.
There is evidence that individuals might be particularly good at visual or auditory memory. If they are indeed exceptional, it stands to reason that they would prefer instruction that plays to their strengths. This is back to preference again. They don’t require instruction in this format. How about the contention that they learn better if we honor their preferences? Educational research fails to support this contention. As cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham says, when learners are tested using instruction “…matching the ‘preferred’ modality of a student doesn’t give that student any edge in learning.” (p. 176). Evan Straub of the University of Michigan in a post from March 19, 2025 puts it bluntly,
No study has shown that teaching to an identified learning style results in better retention, better learning outcomes or student success. Instead, we see that teaching to a self-identified learning style has no impact on learning in children or adults.
Daniel Willingham in a 2010 article proposes a clarifying question.
“If I were to tell you ‘I want to teach you something. Would you rather learn it by seeing a slideshow, reading it as text, hearing it as a podcast, or enacting it in a series of movements,’ do you think you could answer without first asking what you were to learn—a dance, a piece of music, or an equation?”
Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay
A dance is best learned as a series of movement (kinesthetic mode). So is learning to tie a necktie or how to tie various kinds of specialized knots. The diagrams of knots in boy scout manuals never got me very far. Seeing a slideshow wouldn’t be any better. Hearing a podcast on tying knots would be a farce. This is to say that optimal learning is contextual.
If you have listened to this podcast for very long, you know that I love learning—but I don’t enjoy futility. I get frustrated when the instructional modality doesn’t match the learning task. One example is when I installed a garage door opener. You know—the kind with a remote you keep in your car that magically opens and closes the door when you push a button. When I opened the box, I pulled out all the parts and arranged them in categories on the garage floor. When I unfurled the instructions I found I was dealing with a piece of paper about 1 square yard and printed on both sides. It had pictures connected by arrows. It turns out many of the pictures were irrelevant as the instructions included all six kinds of door openers made by the company. I had to jump to new locations on the mammoth diagram over and over. I really needed a YouTube video that dealt only with my model of door opener, but such things didn’t exist at the time.
Another example would be driving instructions listed as a series of steps detailing sequentially turns, highway numbers, distances. It is so much better in a moving car to have a map that moves with you—that shows your car on a blue line that represents your current position. It helps to have well-timed verbal instructions in addition to the visual map: “go past these lights and turn left at the second set of lights.”
During my spring break since the last podcast episode my wife and I were in NZ and AUS. I drove three different rental cars on the left side (that is to say the wrong side) of the road for over 2,000 miles. It was quite a learning experience! Conceptually I knew that I was on the proper side of the road when I was positioned next to the center line of the road. I read a 15-page book about driving in NZ. That kind of knowledge was not sufficient for the reality of driving. I will likely never forget picking up my first rental car after dark at the airport in Auckland, NZ and driving through downtown to my AirBnb. It was late enough that traffic was a bit thin, but Auckland is a city of 1.7 million and has roads like our major cities. I was not aware that the right-hand lane on the left side of the road was for faster vehicles, but some horn blasts from irritated drivers alerted me that I needed to learn. When I signaled a lane change, I turned on the windshield wipers because the turning indicator is on the opposite side of the steering wheel from cars in the U.S. Total immersion in NZ and AUS driving was a kinesthetic learning experience and my preference would have been for text with pictures.
Learning requires attentiveness to a small part of the overwhelming sensory bombardment we experience every waking moment. It is hard to gain and maintain attention and not to be distracted. It is best if instruction changes sensory modalities frequently and doesn’t become too predictable. In a classroom this could mean verbal presentation intermittently moves to a visual that shows an aspect of the idea not easily captured by hand-waving. Moving the student audience from passive recipients to active participants by having them form small groups tasked with answering a question is another helpful move. In Sydney, AUS at the Opera House, my wife and I were privileged to attend a pre-concert explanation of the symphonic pieces to be performed. The presentation talked about the composer and what he was trying to do in various movements. The verbal explanation regularly and helpfully gave way to audio excerpts that illustrated what we would hear that night.
Even textbooks that attempt to teach rather than just provide information need to keep the attention of students. I was involved in creating the pedagogy of the secular text, Essential Cell Biology in its first edition. In this book numerous and very accurate and detailed illustrations of structures and processes augmented the textual pedagogy and helped students to visualize what the text was attempting to paint with words. In addition, animations of processes were available to supplement the static illustrations. Finally, every 3-4 pages there was a challenging question that the student should stop and answer to gauge their comprehension. All students regardless of their preferred sensory channel were served by this approach.
Daniel Willingham in his book, Why Don’t Students Like School? lists the principle for his chapter 7 on learning styles as:
Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn.
That’s a truthful observation. However, it’s an assertion, not a principle by my definition. It does not invoke causality.
To summarize today’s podcast, let me articulate two principles that marry the senses and the learning process:
We only learn through sensory input, but the most effective sensory channel depends on the particular learning task and not on personal preference.
I hope that has become clear today. The nature of what I am trying to learn determines the optimal learning path. My personal preference for a sensory channel is not a magic bullet that improves my learning. It may make me more comfortable at the outset, but learning invariably requires wrestling. Understanding is the fruit of struggle, but there is no point in creating frustration through prioritizing the wrong sensory channels.
Most humans have a full complement of sensory channels that carry information, and that information is the raw material out of which meaning is constructed as patterns are discerned.
This principle is the closer parallel to Willingham’s assertion. The actual process of learning is the same for everyone. We all have a very limited working memory where sensory information interacts with previous learning. All learning involves pattern recognition and the resulting formation or modification of concepts and their connections.
Those universals are the basis for the deep and durable learning podcast.
I want you, my listeners, to know that I have come to the conclusion that it is time to put the podcast to bed. This is the 75th podcast episode. I definitely have more I could say, but at 75 years of age I have other priorities that deserve more attention than I can currently give them with my podcast and blog schedule. I’ll say more in the next podcast, which will be my last as far as I know now.
Outro:
The next podcast will be a summary of this season which has emphasized how to optimize learning for your child (and you) whether your kids are in a school or home schooled. The goal is learning to think slowly (that is reflectively) leading to understanding and application. Slow thinking stands in opposition to rapid retrieval that most educational systems prioritize.
Join me in two weeks for my summary of principles for learning. See you then!